Shut Your Eyes Tight

by John Verdon

  More important, what was she trying to find out about the Skard family?

  How had she come to know they existed?

  And what kind of relationship did she have with the man she’d known as Hector Flores?

  Was it business? Or pleasure? Or something much sicker?

  A closer look at the automobile URLs revealed that they were the proprietary advertising websites maintained by the companies to provide model, feature, and pricing information.

  The search term “Skard” led to a site with information about a small town in Norway, as well as to a number of other sites with no connection to the Sardinia-based crime family. Which meant that Jillian had already learned in some other way about the family’s existence, or at least the existence of that name, and her Internet search was an attempt to find out more.

  Gurney went back to the master list and noted the dates of her car and Skard searches. He discovered that she’d visited the car sites months before searching the Skard name. In fact, the car searches went back to the beginning of the six-month time window that had been documented, and he wondered how long she’d been pursuing that kind of data. He made a note to suggest to BCI that they get an expanded warrant for her search records going back at least two years.

  Gurney stared out at the wet landscape. An intriguing, if highly speculative, scenario was beginning to take shape—a scenario in which Jillian may have played a much more active …

  A low rumble from the road below the barn interrupted his train of thought. He went to the kitchen window, which offered the longest view in that direction, and noticed that the police cruiser was gone. He looked at the clock and realized that the promised forty-eight-hour protection window had expired. However, another vehicle, the source of the throaty engine rumble, now distinctly louder, came into view down at the point where the town road blended into the Gurney driveway.

  It was a red Pontiac GTO, a seventies classic, and Gurney knew only one person who owned one—Jack Hardwick. The fact that he was driving the GTO instead of a black Crown Victoria meant he was off duty.

  Gurney went to the side door and waited. Hardwick emerged from the car in old blue jeans and a white T-shirt under a well-worn motorcycle jacket—a retro tough guy stepping out of a time machine.

  “This is quite a surprise,” said Gurney.

  “Just thought I’d drop by, make sure you weren’t getting any more doll gifts.”

  “Very thoughtful. Come on in.”

  Inside, Hardwick said nothing, just let his gaze wander around the room.

  “You drove a long way in the rain,” said Gurney.

  “Rain stopped an hour ago.”

  “No kidding. Guess I didn’t notice.”

  “You look like your brain’s on another planet.”

  “Then I guess it must be,” said Gurney with a sharper edge than he’d intended.

  Hardwick showed no reaction. “That woodstove save you money?”

  “What?”

  “That woodstove, does it save you money on oil?”

  “How the hell should I know? What are you here for, Jack?”

  “Can’t a guy drop in on a buddy? Just to shoot the shit?”

  “Neither one of us is the kind of guy who ever drops in on anyone. And neither of us has any interest in shooting the shit. So what are you here for?”

  “Man wants to get to the point. Okay, I can respect that. No wasted time. How about you make some coffee and offer me a seat?”

  “Right,” said Gurney. “I’ll make coffee. You sit wherever you want.”

  Hardwick ambled to the far end of the big room and studied the stonework of the old fireplace. Gurney plugged in the coffeemaker and started the brewing process.

  A few minutes later, they were facing each other in the pair of armchairs by the hearth.

  “Not bad,” said Hardwick after a sip of his coffee.

  “No, it’s actually pretty good. What the hell do you want, Jack?”

  He took another sip before answering. “I thought maybe we could trade some information.”

  “I don’t think I have anything worth trading.”

  “Oh, yeah you do. No doubt about that. So what do you say? I tell you stuff, you tell me stuff.”

  Gurney felt a surprising surge of anger. “Okay, Jack, why the hell not? You go first.”

  “I spoke to my friend at Interpol again. Pushed him a bit on that ‘Sandy’s Den’ thing. And guess what? It was also called ‘Alessandro’s Den.’ Sometimes one, sometimes the other. That come as a big shock to you?”

  “How could it be a shock?”

  “Last time we talked about it, you seemed pretty sure it was all a coincidence. You don’t still think that, do you?”

  “I guess not. There can’t be that many Alessandros in the sexy-photo business.”

  “Right. So you got your little absinthe glass from Saul Steck, who happens to work under the name Alessandro for Karnala Fashion taking pictures of Mapleshade girls who shortly thereafter disappear. So tell me, ace, what the fuck are you up to? And by the way, while you’re explaining that, how about you explain the look on your face yesterday afternoon when you were staring over Holdenfield’s shoulder at that Karnala ad.”

  Gurney leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and raised his coffee cup slowly to his lips. He took a few leisurely sips before opening his eyes. Still holding the cup in front of his mouth, he looked over at Hardwick. The man was in the identical position, his cup raised, watching Gurney. They traded small ironic smiles and lowered their cups to the arms of their chairs.

  “Well,” began Gurney, “when all else fails, even the wicked sometimes need to fall back on honesty as the only way out.” Elbowing the potential consequences from his mind, he went on to tell Hardwick the whole Sonya—Mug Shot Art—Jykynstyl—amnesia story, including the ensuing text messages and his belated recognition of the brownstone bedroom in the Karnala ads. When he came to the end, he discovered that his coffee had gotten cold, but he finished it anyway.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” said Hardwick. “You realize what you’ve done to me?”

  “Done to you?”

  “By telling me all that shit, you’ve put me in the same fucking position you’re in.”

  Gurney felt a huge sense of relief but didn’t think it would be a good idea to say so. Instead he said, “So what do you think we ought to do?”

  “What do I think? You’re the fucking genius who failed to disclose significant new evidence in a felony investigation, which in itself is a felony. And telling me these things, you have now put me in the position of—guess what?—concealing significant new evidence in a felony investigation, which in itself is a felony. Unless, of course, I go immediately to Rodriguez and hang your ass out to dry. Jesus, Gurney! Now you ask me, what do I think we ought to do? And don’t think I didn’t pick up on that ‘we’ shit you dropped into the discussion. You’re the fucking genius who created this mess. What do you think needs to be done?”

  The more agitated Hardwick got, the more relieved Gurney felt—because, perversely, it meant that Hardwick was committed to keeping his confession in confidence for the duration.

  “I think if we solve the case,” said Gurney calmly, “the mess will take care of itself.”

  “Oh, shit, yeah, sure. Why didn’t I think of that? Just solve the case! What a neat idea!”

  “Let’s at least talk it through, Jack, see what we agree on, what we don’t agree on, get all the possibilities on the table. We may be closer to a solution than we think.” As soon as he said that, he realized he didn’t believe it, but to backtrack at this point would make him sound like he was losing it. Maybe he was.

  Hardwick gave him a doubtful look. “Go ahead, Sherlock. I’m all ears, lay it out. I just hope that whatever the hell drug they gave you didn’t fry your brain.”

  He wished Hardwick hadn’t said that. He got another cup of coffee and settled back in his chair.

  “Okay, this is the way I pictur
e it. It sort of looks like an H.”

  “What looks like an H?”

  “The structure of what’s happening. I just tend to see things geometrically. One of the verticals of the H is the established Skard family business—basically the worldwide sale of illegal, expensive forms of sexual gratification. According to your Interpol people, the Skards are a uniquely vicious and predatory crime family. Through Karnala, according to Jordan Ballston, they operate at the ugliest and most lethal S&M extremes of the sex business—selling carefully selected young women to wealthy sexual psychopaths.”

  Hardwick was nodding in agreement.

  Gurney went on. “The other vertical in the H is the Mapleshade Residential Academy. You already know most of this, but let me talk it through. Mapleshade treats girls with intensely disordered sexual obsessions, obsessions that lead to reckless predatory behavior. In recent years they’ve been focusing exclusively on that clientele and have become well known in the field—due to Scott Ashton’s huge academic reputation. He’s quite a star in that corner of psychopathology. Suppose the Skards became aware of Mapleshade and saw its potential.”

  “Its potential for them?”

  “Right. Mapleshade provided a concentrated population of intensely sexualized victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse. To the Skards it would look like—forgive my choice of words—the ultimate gourmet meat market.”

  Hardwick’s pale blue eyes seemed to be searching for possible cracks in Gurney’s logic. After a few seconds, he said, “I can see that. What’s the crossbar on your H?”

  “The crossbar connecting the Skards to Mapleshade is the man who called himself Hector Flores. It would seem that his way into Mapleshade was to make himself useful to Ashton, gain his trust, offer to do little jobs around the school.”

  “But remember, none of the girls disappeared while they were still students.”

  “No. That would have set off an instant alarm. There’s a vast difference between a ‘child’ disappearing from boarding school and an ‘adult’ choosing to leave home. I imagine he approached girls who were about to graduate, felt them out in a general way, proceeded cautiously, made specific offers only to the ones he knew would accept, then instructed them how to leave home without arousing suspicion, maybe even arranged for their transportation. Or that might have been handled by someone else in the organization, maybe by the same person who made the videos of the young women talking about their sexual obsessions.”

  “That would be your buddy, Saul Steck—aka Alessandro, aka Jay Jykynstyl.”

  “Entirely possible,” said Gurney.

  “How would Flores have explained the need for the car argument?”

  “He could have told them it was a necessary precaution, to make sure no one launched a mis-per hunt and located them with their new benefactor, creating embarrassment all around, ruining the deal.”

  Hardwick nodded. “So Flores lays the big con on these wacko babes like he’s running a hot dating service—matches made in hell. Of course, once the young lady enters the gentleman’s home—without leaving any trace of where she’s gone—she discovers that the arrangement is not what she’d imagined. But at that point it’s too late to back out. Because the sick piece of shit who bought her has no intention of ever letting her see the light of day again. Which is fine with the Skards. More than fine, if we believe Ballston’s story about the icing on the cake, the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ to top off the process with a tasteful beheading.”

  “That about sums it up,” said Gurney. “The theory is that Hector Flores, or Leonardo Skard, if that’s his true identity, was the prime facilitator of a kind of homicidal matchmaking service for dangerous sex maniacs—some more dangerous than others. Of course, it’s still just a theory.”

  “Not a bad one,” said Hardwick, “as far as it goes. But it doesn’t explain Jillian Perry getting whacked on her wedding day.”

  “I think that Jillian may have gotten involved with Hector Flores and that she may have learned at some point who he really was—maybe that his real name was Skard.”

  “Involved with him how? Why?”

  “Maybe Hector needed a helper. Maybe Jillian was his first con job when he arrived at Mapleshade three years ago, when she was still a student there. Maybe he made some promises to her. Maybe she was his little mole among the other students, helping him select likely candidates. And maybe she finally outlived her usefulness, or maybe she was even crazy enough to try to blackmail him after finding out who he was. Her mother told me she loved living on the edge—and you can’t get any closer to the edge than threatening a member of the Skard family.”

  Hardwick looked incredulous. “So he cut off her head on her wedding day?”

  “Or Mother’s Day, as Becca pointed out.”

  “Becca?” Hardwick raised a leering eyebrow.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” said Gurney.

  “And what about Savannah Liston? Another Flores mole who outlived her usefulness?”

  “It’s a workable hypothesis.”

  “I thought she was the one who told you last week about a couple of girls she couldn’t get in touch with. If she was working with Flores, why would she do that?”

  “Maybe he told her to. Maybe to give me the idea that I could trust her, confide in her. He might have realized that the investigation was going into high gear, and of course that would mean that we’d be talking to Mapleshade graduates. So it would only be a matter of time—and not much time at that—before we found out that a significant number of those graduates were unreachable. He might have been letting Savannah give me that fact a couple of days before we would have found out anyway—to create the impression that she was one of the good guys.”

  “Do you think she knew … that she and Jillian both knew …?”

  “Knew what was happening to the girls they were helping Flores recruit? I doubt it. They probably swallowed the basic sales pitch Hector was serving up—just introducing girls with special interests to men with special interests and earning a nice commission for their efforts. Of course, I don’t know any of that for sure. It’s possible that this whole case is one big trapdoor to hell, and I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on.”

  “Shit, Gurney. Your total lack of faith in your own theories is really encouraging. What do you suggest for our next move?”

  Gurney was saved from the discomfort of having no answer by the ring of his cell phone.

  It was Robin Wigg. She began, as usual, without any preamble. “I have preliminary results from the lab tests on the boots found in the Liston residence. Captain Rodriguez has authorized me to discuss them with you, since they were performed at your suggestion. Is this a convenient time?”

  “Absolutely. What have you got?”

  “A lot of what you might expect, plus something you wouldn’t expect. Shall I start with that?” There was something about Wigg’s calm, businesslike contralto that Gurney had always liked. Regardless of the content of the words, the tone said that order could prevail over chaos.

  “Please. The solutions are usually in the surprises.”

  “Yes, I find that to be true. The surprise was the presence on the boots of a particular pheromone: methyl p-hydroxybenzoate. How knowledgeable are you in this area?”

  “I skipped chemistry in high school. You’d better start at the beginning.”

  “Actually, it’s pretty simple. Pheromones are glandular secretions meant to transmit information from one animal to another. Specific pheromones secreted by an individual animal may attract, warn, calm, or excite another individual. Methyl p-hydroxybenzoate is a powerful canine-attractant pheromone, and it was identified in high concentrations on both boots.”

  “And the effect of that would be …?”

  “Any dog, but especially a tracking dog, would easily and eagerly follow a trail created by a person wearing those boots.”

  “How would someone get access to this stuff?”

  “Some canine pheromones a
re available commercially for use in animal shelters and behavior-modification regimens. It could have been acquired that way or from direct contact with a bitch in estrus.”

  “Interesting. Is there any unintentional way you can think of for a chemical like that to get on someone’s boots?”

  “In the concentrations in which it was found? Short of an explosion in a pheromone-bottling facility, no.”

  “Very interesting. Thank you, Sergeant. I’m going to put Jack Hardwick on the phone. I’d appreciate your repeating to him what you told me—in case he has questions I can’t answer.”

  Hardwick had one question. “When you call it an attractant pheromone secreted by a bitch in estrus, what you mean is a female sex scent no male dog could ignore, right?”

  He listened to her brief answer, ended the call, and handed the phone back to Gurney, looking excited. “Holy shit. The irresistible scent of a bitch in heat. What do you make of that, Sherlock?”

  “It’s obvious that Flores wanted to be absolutely sure that the K-9 dog would follow that trail like an arrow. He may even have done some Internet research and discovered that the state tracking dogs are all males.”

  “Which obviously means that he wanted us to find the machete.”

  “No doubt about it,” said Gurney. “And he wanted us to find it fast. Both times.”

  “So what’s the scenario? He lops off their heads, puts on his doctored boots, scurries out into the woods, ditches the machete, comes back into the crime scene, takes off the boots, and … then what?”

  “In the case of Savannah, he just walks away, drives away, whatever,” said Gurney. “The Jillian situation is the impossible one.”

  “Because of the video problem?”

  “That, plus the question of where could he have gone after he came back to the cottage?”

  “Plus the more basic question: Why would he bother to come back at all?”

  Gurney smiled. “That’s the one little piece of it I think I understand. He came back to leave the boots in plain sight so the tracking dog would be excited by that scent in the cottage and immediately follow it out to the murder weapon. He wanted us to find it fast.”