by John Verdon
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Mapleshade supposedly provides some sort of remediation for unhealthy sexual fixations. Christ, if what I’m seeing in the faces of these young women reflects the benefit of therapy, what the hell were they like before?”
“Worse.”
“Jesus.”
“I’ve read some of Ashton’s journal articles. His goals are modest. Minimal, really. His critics say his approach borders on the immoral. The faith-based therapists can’t stand him. He believes in aiming not for major reorientations but for the smallest possible changes. One comment he made at a professional seminar became famous, or infamous. Ashton enjoys shocking his peers. He said if he could persuade a ten-year-old girl to perform fellatio on her twelve-year-old boyfriend instead of her eight-year-old cousin, he would consider the therapy a complete success. In some circles that approach is a tad controversial.”
“Progress, not perfection, eh?”
“Right.”
“Still, when I look at these expressions …”
“One thing you have to remember—the success rate in the field is not high. I’m sure that even Ashton fails more often than he succeeds. That’s just a fact of life. When you’re dealing with sex offenders …”
But Gurney had stopped listening to her.
Good God, why hadn’t it registered before?
Holdenfield was staring at him. “What is it?”
He didn’t answer immediately. There were implications to be considered, decisions to be made regarding how much to say. Crucial decisions. But making any decision at that moment was beyond his ability. He was nearly paralyzed by the realization that the bedroom in the photo was the room he’d stepped into to hide from the cleaning people the night he retrieved the little absinthe glass. He’d seen it for only a fraction of a second when he’d switched the light on and off to get his bearings. At the time it had triggered a strange sense of déjà vu—because he’d already seen the layout of the room in the photo of Jillian on Ashton’s wall, but that night in the brownstone he hadn’t been able to put the two images together.
“What is it?” Holdenfield repeated.
“It’s hard to explain,” he said, which was largely true. His voice was strained. He couldn’t take his eyes off the ad closest to him. The girl was crouched on a rumpled bed, appearing both exhausted and inexhaustible—inviting, threatening, daring. He was jarred by a flashback from a religious retreat in his freshman year at St. Genesius: a wild-eyed priest ranting about hellfire. A fire that burns for all eternity, that eats at your screaming flesh like a beast whose hunger grows with every bite.
Hardwick was the first to return to the conference room. He glanced at Gurney, the ad photo, and Holdenfield, and he seemed to sense immediately the tension in the air. Wigg returned next and took up her station in front of her laptop, followed by a glum Anderson and an antsy Blatt. Kline came in speaking on his cell, trailed by Rodriguez. Hardwick sat across from Gurney, watching him curiously.
“All right,” said Kline, again with the air of a man accomplishing a great deal. “Back on track. Following up on the question of the true identity of Hector Flores: Rod, I believe there was a plan to conduct some reinterviews of Ashton’s neighbors to make sure no details about Flores had slipped through the cracks first time around. How’s that going?”
Rodriguez looked for a moment like he was going to excoriate the whole exercise as a waste of time. Instead he turned to Anderson. “Anything new on that?”
Anderson folded his arms across his chest. “Not a single significant new fact.”
Kline shot Gurney a challenging glance—since the reinterviewing idea had been his.
Gurney wrenched his mind back to the discussion and turned to Anderson. “Did you manage to sort out the actual eyewitness stuff, which is scarce, from the hearsay stuff, which is endless?”
“Yeah, we did that.”
“And?”
“There’s kind of a problem with the eyewitness data.”
“What’s that?” interjected Kline.
“The eyewitnesses are mostly dead.”
Kline blinked. “Say that again?”
“The eyewitnesses are mostly dead.”
“Christ, I heard you. Tell me what you mean.”
“I mean, who actually spoke to Hector Flores? Or to Leonardo Skard, or whatever the hell we’re calling him now? Who had face-to-face contact? Jillian Perry, and she’s dead. Kiki Muller, and she’s dead. The girls who Savannah Liston saw talking to him when he was working on Ashton’s flower bed at Mapleshade, and they’re all missing—possibly dead, if they ended up with guys like Ballston.”
Kline looked skeptical. “I thought people saw him in the car with Ashton, or in town.”
“What they saw was somebody in a cowboy hat and sunglasses,” said Anderson. “None of them can provide a physical description worth a shit, excuse my language. We got a boatload of colorful anecdotes, but that’s about it. Seems like everybody is telling us stories that somebody else told them.”
Kline nodded. “That dovetails perfectly with the Skard reputation.”
Anderson gave him a sideways look.
“The Skards are supposedly ruthless about eliminating real witnesses. Seems like anyone who could finger one of the Skard boys ends up dead. What do you think, Dave?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Kline gave him an odd look. “I’m asking if you think that the diminishing number of people who could ID Flores reinforces the idea that he might be one of the Skard boys.”
“To tell you the truth, Sheridan, at this point I’m not sure what I think. I keep wondering if anything that occurs to me about this case is true. My fear is that I’m missing something big that would explain everything. I’ve worked a hell of a lot of homicide cases over the years, and I’ve never worked one that felt as wrong as this one. It’s like there’s a definite elephant in the room that none of us is seeing.”
Kline sat back thoughtfully. “This may not be the elephant in the room, but I do have a question that keeps bothering me about the missing girls. I understand the car thing, that the girls are all legally adults, that they told their parents not to try to find them, but … don’t any of you find it peculiar that not a single parent notified the police?”
“I’m afraid there’s a sad, simple answer to your question,” said Holdenfield slowly, after a long silence. The oddly softened tone of her voice drew everyone’s attention. “Given a plausible explanation for their daughters’ departures and a request for no further contact, I suspect that the parents were secretly pleased. Many parents of aggressively troublesome children have a terrible fear they’re ashamed to admit: that they’ll be saddled with their little monsters forever. When the monsters finally leave, for whatever reason, I think the parents feel relief.”
Rodriguez looked sick. He stood quietly and headed for the door, his sallow skin ashen. Gurney guessed that Holdenfield had just hit the man’s most sensitive nerve dead-on, a nerve that had been exposed, prodded, needled, and battered from the moment the case had veered from his hunt for a Mexican gardener to a probe of disordered family relationships and sick young women. That nerve had been rubbed so raw over the past week it perhaps wasn’t surprising that a man of already limited flexibility was turning into a basket case.
The door opened before Rodriguez got to it. Gerson stepped in with a tinge of alarm on her lean face, effectively blocking his way. “Excuse me, sir, an urgent call.”
“Not now,” he muttered vaguely. “Maybe Anderson … or someone …”
“Sir, it’s an emergency. Another Mapleshade-related homicide.”
Rodriguez stared at her. “What?”
“A homicide—”
“Who?”
“A girl by the name of Savannah Liston.”
It seemed to take a few seconds for the news to register—as though he were listening to a translation. “Right,” he said finally, and followed her out of the room.
When h
e returned five minutes later, the vague speculations that had been drifting around the table in his absence were replaced by an eager attentiveness.
“Okay. Everyone is here who needs to be here,” he announced. “I’m only going to go through this once, so I suggest you take notes.”
Anderson and Blatt pulled out small identical notebooks and pens. Wigg’s fingers were poised over her laptop keys.
“That was Tambury police chief Burt Luntz. He called from his present location, a bungalow rented by Savannah Liston, an employee of Mapleshade.” There was strength and purpose in the captain’s voice, as though the task of passing along information had put him, at least temporarily, on solid ground. “At approximately five o’clock this morning, Chief Luntz received a phone call at his home. In what sounded to Luntz like a Spanish accent, all the caller said was, ‘Seventy-eight Buena Vista, for all the reasons I have written.’ When Luntz asked the caller for his name, his response was ‘Edward Vallory calls me the Spanish Gardener.’ At that point the caller hung up.”
Anderson frowned at his watch. “This was at five A.M.—ten hours ago—and we’re just hearing about it now?”
“Unfortunately, the call didn’t set off an alarm with Luntz. He just assumed it was a wrong number or the guy was drunk or maybe both. He’s not privy to the details of our investigation, so the Edward Vallory references meant nothing to him. Then, about half an hour ago, he got a call from a Dr. Lazarus at Mapleshade saying that they had an employee, normally responsible, who didn’t show up for work today, wasn’t answering her phone, and—considering all the crazy things going on—could Luntz send one of his local patrol cars by her house to make sure everything was all right? Then he gives the address as Seventy-eight Buena Vista Trail, which rings a bell, so Luntz drives over there himself.”
Kline was leaning forward in his chair like a sprinter on his mark. “And finds Savannah Liston dead?”
“He finds the back door unlocked, with Liston at the kitchen table. Same configuration as Jillian Perry.”
“Exactly the same?” asked Gurney.
“Apparently.”
“Where is Luntz now?” asked Kline.
“In the kitchen, with some Tambury uniforms on the way to set up a perimeter and secure the scene. He’s already gone through the house—lightly, just to verify that no one else is present. Hasn’t touched anything.”
“Did he say if he noticed anything odd?” asked Gurney.
“One thing. A pair of boots by the door. The kind you slip on over your shoes. Sound familiar?”
“The boots again. Jesus. There’s something about the boots.” Gurney’s tone held Rodriguez’s attention. “Captain, I know it’s not my place to … to try to influence your allocation of resources, but … may I make a suggestion?”
“Go ahead.”
“I would recommend that you get those boots to your lab people immediately, keep them here all night if you have to, and have them run every goddamn chemical-recognition test they can.”
“Looking for what?”
“I don’t know.”
Rodriguez made a face, but not as bad a one as Gurney had feared. “Based on nothing, that’s a hell of a shot in the dark, Gurney.”
“The boots have shown up twice. Before they show up again, I’d like to know why.”
Chapter 69
Blind alleys
Anderson, Hardwick, and Blatt were dispatched to the Buena Vista scene, along with an evidence team selected by Sergeant Wigg, and a K-9 team. The ME’s office was notified. Gurney asked if he could accompany the BCI people to the scene. Rodriguez predictably refused. But he did give Wigg the assignment of coordinating and expediting lab work on the boots. Kline said something about agreeing on a damage-control strategy for a scheduled press conference, and he and the captain went off to confer privately, leaving Gurney and Holdenfield alone in the conference room.
“So?” she said. It was half a question, half an amused observation.
“So?” he repeated.
She shrugged, glanced at her briefcase, in which she had replaced her copies of the Karnala ads.
He guessed she wanted to know more about his earlier disturbed reaction. He’d already told her it was hard to explain. And he still wasn’t ready to talk about it, still hadn’t figured out the implications of full disclosure, still hadn’t figured out the damage-control options.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“I’d love to hear it.”
“I’d love to tell you about it, but … it’s complicated.” The first part was less true than the second part. “Maybe another time.”
“Okay.” She smiled back. “Another time.”
With no chance of direct access to the lab techs and no other compelling reason to hang around the state police campus, Gurney headed home to Walnut Crossing, with the day’s wild bits and pieces swirling through his head.
Ballston’s surreal confession, the genteel voice emanating from a hellish mind, describing his compliance with Karnala’s beheading request as a courtesy, the beheading of Savannah Liston echoing the beheaded doll on the bed echoing the beheaded bride at the table. And the rubber boots. Once again, the boots. Did he really think the lab tests would produce a revelation? He was too worn out from the day to know what he really thought.
The call he got from Sheridan Kline as he was finishing a bowl of leftover spaghetti added facts without adding progress. In addition to repeating everything Rodriguez had passed along from Luntz, Kline revealed that a bloodstained machete had been discovered by the K-9 team in a wooded area behind the bungalow and that the ME estimated the time of death to be roughly within a three-hour window of the cryptic predawn call Luntz had received.
There were many times in his career when Gurney had felt challenged. There were occasionally cases, such as the recent Mellery horror, in which he believed that the challenger might win. But never had he felt so broadly outmaneuvered. Sure, he had a general theory for what might be going on and who might be behind it—the whole Skard operation, with “Hector Flores” recruiting “bad girls” for the murderous pleasure of the sickest men on earth—but it was just a theory. And even if it were valid, it still didn’t come close to explaining the twisty mechanics of the murders themselves. It didn’t explain the impossible placement of the machete behind Ashton’s cottage. It didn’t explain the function of the boots. It didn’t explain the choice of the local victims.
Why, exactly, did Jillian Perry, Kiki Muller, and Savannah Liston all have to die?
Worst of all, without knowing why those three were killed, how would it be possible to protect whoever else might be in danger?
After exhausting himself by exploring the same blind alleys over and over, Gurney fell asleep around midnight.
When he awoke seven hours later, a gusty wind was heaving waves of gray rain against the bedroom windows. The window next to his bed—the only one in the house he’d left unlocked—was open two inches at the top, not enough to let the rain blow in but more than enough to admit a damp draft that made his sheets and pillow feel clammy.
The dismal atmosphere, the lack of light and color in the world, tempted him to stay in bed, uncomfortable as it was, but he knew that would be an emotional mistake, so he forced himself up and into the bathroom. His feet were cold. He turned on the shower.
Thank God, he thought once again, for the primal magic of water.
Cleanser, restorer, simplifier. As the tingling hot spray massaged his back, the muscles in his neck and shoulders relaxed. His knotted, hyperactive thoughts began to dissolve in the water’s soothing rush. Like surf hissing over sand … like a benign opiate … the pelting of the water on his skin made life seem simple and good.
Chapter 70
In plain sight
After a modest breakfast of two eggs and two slices of plain toast, Gurney decided to reground himself, as tedious as that might be, in the original facts of the case.
He spread out the segments of t
he file on the dining table and, with a spark of contrariness, reached for the document he’d had the most difficulty concentrating on when he’d gone through everything originally. It was a fifty-seven-page printout listing all the hundreds of sites Jillian had visited on the Internet and the hundreds of search terms she had entered in the browsers on her cell phone and her laptop during the last six months of her life—mostly related to chic travel destinations, super-expensive hotels, cars, jewelry.
After this personal computer and Web-usage data had been acquired by BCI, however, no analysis had been performed. Gurney suspected that it was just another piece of the investigation that had disappeared into the crevasse separating Hardwick’s stewardship from Blatt’s. The only indication that anyone other than himself had even seen it was a handwritten comment on a sticky note affixed to the first page: “Complete waste of time and resources.”
Perversely, Gurney’s suspicion that the comment was the captain’s had intensified his attention to every line of those fifty-seven pages. And without that attention boost, he might very well have missed one little five-letter word halfway down page thirty-seven.
Skard.
It appeared again on the following page, and twice more a few pages later.
The discovery propelled Gurney through the rest of the document, then back through all fifty-seven pages one more time. It was during this second pass that he made his second discovery.
The car makes that were scattered among the search terms—makes that at first had blended in his mind with the names of resorts, boutiques, and jewelers into a general image of material comfort—now formed a special pattern of their own.
He realized that they were the very same makes that had been the subjects of the missing girls’ arguments with their parents.
Could that be a coincidence?
What the hell had Jillian been up to?
What was it she needed to know about those cars? And why?
