Shut Your Eyes Tight

by John Verdon

  It was a strange speech, thought Gurney, an elegant diatribe with the practiced ring of one delivered before, perhaps at conferences of his peers, yet it was animated by a palpable fury that was far from artificial. As he gazed into Ashton’s eyes, he recognized this fury as an emotion he had seen before. He had seen it in the eyes of victims of sexual abuse. Most memorably, most vividly, he had seen it in the eyes of a fifty-year-old woman who was confessing to the ax murder of her seventy-five-year-old stepfather who had raped her when she was five.

  Her defense in court was that she wanted to be sure her own granddaughter would have nothing to fear from him, that no one’s granddaughter would have anything to fear from him. Her eyes were full of a wild, protective rage, and despite the efforts of her attorney to silence her, she went on to swear that the only desire she had left was to kill them all, every monster, every abuser, kill them all, chop them to pieces. As she was removed from the court, she was shouting, screaming, that she would wait at the doors of prisons and kill every offender who was released, every single one of them who was turned loose on the world. She’d use every last ounce of strength God gave her to “chop them to pieces!”

  That’s when Gurney caught a glimpse of the possible connection—the simple equation that might explain everything.

  He spoke matter-of-factly, as if they’d been discussing the subject all evening. “There’s no chance of Tirana ever being turned loose on anyone.”

  At first the man showed no reaction, seeming not to have heard the words Gurney had uttered, much less the accusations of murder they implied.

  Behind Ashton on the dusky landing, however, Gurney detected another movement—more identifiably this time as a brown-clad arm and at the end of it a small reflective glint of something metallic. Then, as before, it was withdrawn into the shallow nook beyond the doorway.

  Ashton’s head until then had been tilted a little to the left. Now it pivoted, in the slowest-motion arc imaginable, to the right. He switched the pistol from his right hand to his left, which rested in his lap. He elevated his right hand tentatively to the side of his head, so that his fingertips lightly touched his ear and his temple, remaining there in a gesture that was both delicate and disconcerting. Combined with the angle of his head, it created the peculiar impression of a man listening for some elusive melody.

  Eventually his eyes met Gurney’s and he lowered his hand to the arm of his chair, at the same time raising the hand that held the pistol. A smile bloomed and faded on his face like some grotesque, short-lived flower. “You’re such a clever, clever man.”

  The background murmur of voices emanating from the speakers in the monitor behind him grew louder, sharper.

  Ashton seemed not to notice. “So clever, so perceptive, so eager to impress. Impress whom?, I wonder.”

  “Something’s burning,” Hardwick said in a loud, urgent voice.

  “You’re a child,” Ashton went on, following his own train of thought. “A child who’s learned a card trick and keeps showing it to the same people over and over, trying to re-create the reaction they had to it the first time.”

  “Something’s goddamn burning!” Hardwick repeated, pointing at the screen.

  Gurney was alternately watching the gun and the deceptively calm eyes of the man who held it. Whatever was happening on the screen would have to wait. He wanted Ashton to keep talking.

  There was another movement on the landing, and a small man in a brown cardigan stepped slowly and quietly into the office doorway. It took Gurney’s mind an extra second to register that it was Hobart Ashton.

  Gurney purposely kept his eyes on Scott Ashton’s gun. He wondered how much of what was happening, if anything, the father understood. What, if anything, did he intend to do? What accounted for the stealth of his approach? What knowledge or suspicion accounted for the caution with which he’d climbed the stairs and concealed himself on the landing? More urgently, could he see his son’s gun from where he stood? Would he even understand what it meant? How delusional was he? And perhaps most urgently, if the old man were to create, purposely or inadvertently, some momentary distraction, would it afford an opportunity for Gurney to launch himself across the room and get to the gun before Ashton could use it on him?

  These desperate musings were interrupted by a sudden outburst.

  “Shit! The chapel is on fire!” shouted Hardwick.

  Gurney looked at the screen while staying peripherally aware of the positions of Scott Ashton and his father. On the screen, the video transmission clearly showed smoke coming from the sconce lamps on the chapel walls. The girls had either exited their seating areas or were in a hasty scramble to do so, congregating in the center aisle and on the raised platform nearest the camera position.

  Gurney rose reflexively to his feet, followed by Hardwick.

  “Careful, Detective,” said Ashton, switching the pistol to his right hand and pointing it at Gurney’s chest.

  “Unlock the doors,” commanded Gurney.

  “Not right now.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  From the monitor came an eruption of screams. Gurney glanced back at it just in time to see one of the girls operating a fire extinguisher that had turned into a flame thrower, laying a stream of burning liquid along the length of one of the wooden pews. Another girl came running to the spot with another extinguisher—with the same result, a stream of liquid that ignited the moment it touched the existing fire. It was clear that the extinguishers had been tampered with to reverse their effect. It reminded Gurney of an arson murder in the Bronx twenty years earlier, where it was discovered later that one of the fire extinguishers in a small hardware store had been emptied and recharged with jellied gasoline—homemade napalm.

  The chapel was now in a state of panic.

  “Unlock those fucking doors, you fucking asshole!” Hardwick shouted at Ashton.

  Ashton’s father reached into the pocket of his sweater and withdrew something with a shiny end. As he unfolded a small blade from its handle, Gurney realized what it was—a simple pocketknife, the kind a Boy Scout might whittle a stick with. He held it at his side and stood, expressionlessly, his eyes on the high back of his son’s chair.

  Scott Ashton’s gaze was fixed on Gurney. “This is not the finale I would have preferred, but it’s the one your brilliant interference requires. It’s the second-best solution.”

  “God, let them out of that room, you fucking maniac!” shouted Hardwick.

  “I did my best,” said Ashton calmly. “I had hopes. Each year a few were helped, but after a time I had to admit that most were not. Most left here as poisonous as the day they arrived, left us to go out into the world, poisoning and destroying others.”

  “There was nothing you could do about that,” said Gurney.

  “I didn’t think so, either … until I was given my Mission and my Method. If someone chose to lead a poisonous life, then at least I could limit her exposure, limit the period of her toxicity to others.”

  The shouts and shrieks from the monitor speakers were growing more chaotic. Hardwick started moving toward Ashton with a black look on his face. Gurney put out his hand to hold him back, as Ashton raised his gun calmly, centering his aim on Hardwick’s chest.

  “For Christ’s sake, Jack,” said Gurney, “let’s not provoke the bullet solution when we don’t have any.”

  Hardwick stopped, his jaw muscles bulging.

  Gurney offered Ashton an admiring smile. “Hence the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’?”

  “Ah. Mr. Ballston has been talking.”

  “About Karnala, yes. I’d like to know more.”

  “You already know so much.”

  “Tell me the rest.”

  “It’s a simple story, Detective. I came from a dysfunctional family.” He grinned hideously, managing to convey the nightmares buried in that most overused of all pop-psych terms. Tics moved through his lips like insects under the skin. “I was finally extricated, a
dopted, given an education. I was drawn to a certain kind of work. Mostly I failed. My patients continued to rape children. I didn’t know what to do—until it occurred to me that my family connections provided a way to funnel the worst girls in the world to the worst men in the world.” He grinned again. “Condign reparation. A perfect solution.” The grin faded. “Clever young woman that she was, Jillian found out just a hair more than she should have, overheard a few words of a phone conversation she shouldn’t have, pursued her unfortunate curiosity, became a possible threat to the entire process. Of course, she never grasped the whole picture. But she imagined she could leverage her morsel of knowledge into some personal advantage. Marriage was her first demand. I knew it wouldn’t be her last. I addressed the situation in a way that I found particularly satisfying. Condignly satisfying. For a time all was well. Then you came along.” He aimed the pistol at Gurney’s face.

  On the screen, two pews were in flames, flames were rising from half the lamps, some of the drapes were smoldering. Most of the girls were on the floor, some covering their faces, some trying to breathe through torn pieces of their clothing, some crying, some coughing, a few vomiting.

  Hardwick appeared to be on the verge of an explosion.

  “Then you came along,” Ashton repeated. “Clever, clever David Gurney. And this is the result.” He waved his gun at the screen. “Why didn’t your cleverness tell you that this is the way it would end? How else could it end? Did you really think I’d let them go? Is clever, clever David Gurney really that stupid?”

  Hobart Ashton took a few short steps to the back of his son’s chair.

  Hardwick screamed, “This is your solution, Ashton? This is it, you crazy fucker? Burn a hundred and twenty teenage girls to death? This is your fucking solution?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes, it is! You really thought when I was finally trapped, I’d let them go?” Ashton’s voice was rising now, out of control, hurtling at Gurney and Hardwick like a wild thing with a life of its own. “You thought I’d turn a nest of snakes loose on all the little babies of the world? These toxic things, these slimy, venomous things! Demented, rotten, sucking, slimy things! These slither—”

  It happened so quickly that Gurney almost thought he hadn’t seen it. The sudden flash of an arm around from the back of the chair, a quick curving movement, and that was all—Ashton’s rant cut off in the middle of a word. Then the old man stepping quickly, athletically to the side of the chair, grasping the barrel of Ashton’s gun, pulling it away with a twisting yank and the disturbingly sharp crack of a finger bone. Ashton’s head lolled forward on his chest, and his body began to tilt forward, curling downward, toppling onto the floor, collapsing sideways into a fetal position. It was then that the actual method of killing was made obvious by all the blood that began to pool around his throat.

  Hardwick’s jaw muscles bulged.

  The little man in the brown cardigan wiped his pocketknife on the back cushion of the chair in which Ashton had been sitting, folded it deftly with one hand, and replaced it in his pocket.

  Then he looked down at Ashton and, as if in benediction to his son’s passing soul, said softly, “You’re a piece of shit.”

  Chapter 78

  All he had left

  The intense revulsion Gurney had felt toward violence and blood as a rookie cop, especially the blood from a fatal wound, was something he had learned to contain and conceal during his twenty years in homicide. When he had to, he was able to cloak pretty effectively what he felt—or at least to wrap his horror in the semblance of mere distaste. Which is what he did now.

  Commenting on the blood spreading out in a slow oval, being absorbed into the delicate intricacies of the Persian rug, he said, as if he were describing nothing more tragic than bird shit on a windshield, “What a fucking mess.”

  Hardwick blinked. He stared first at Gurney, then at the body on the floor, then at the fiery bedlam on the screen. He looked uncomprehendingly at Ashton’s father. “The doors. Why don’t you unlock the fucking doors?”

  Gurney and the old man gazed at each other with an eerie lack of any visible concern. In past difficulties the ability to project an attitude of perfect calm had served Gurney well, given him an advantage. But that didn’t seem to be the case now. The old man was radiating a quiet, brutal confidence. It was as though killing Ashton had brought him a deep peace and strength—as though an imbalance had finally been righted.

  This was not a man with whom one could win a simple staring contest. Gurney decided to up the ante and change the rules. And he knew that he needed to do it quickly if anyone was going to get out of that building alive. It was time to take a wild swing.

  “Reminds me of Tel Aviv,” said Gurney, gesturing toward the screen.

  The little man blinked and stretched his lips in a meaningless smile.

  Gurney sensed that the wild swing had produced a solid hit. But now what?

  Hardwick was staring at them with a bewildered fury.

  Gurney continued to focus on the man with the gun. “Too bad you didn’t come a little sooner.”

  “What?”

  “Too bad you didn’t come sooner. Like five months ago instead of three.”

  The little man looked honestly curious. “What’s that to you?”

  “You could’ve stopped that crazy shit with Jillian.”

  “Ah.” He nodded slowly, almost appreciatively.

  “Of course, if you’d intervened even sooner, back when you should have, everything would be different now. Better, I think, don’t you?”

  The little man continued nodding, but vaguely, without any apparent meaning. Then he frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Gurney was seized by the sickening possibility that he was on the wrong track. But there was nowhere left to go except forward, no time left for thinking twice. So, then, forward with a vengeance. “Maybe you should’ve killed him a long time ago. Maybe you should’ve strangled him when he was born, before Tirana really sank her teeth into him. Little fucker was nuts from the beginning, like his mother, not a businessman like you.”

  Gurney searched the man’s face for the slightest reaction, but his expression was no more communicative—or human—than the pistol in his hand. So once again there was nowhere to go but forward. “That’s why you showed up here after the Jillian drama, right? Leonardo killing her was one thing, that could just be good business, but cutting her fucking head off at the wedding, that was … more than business. My guess is you came to keep an eye on things. Make sure that things were conducted in a more businesslike fashion. You didn’t want the crazy little fucker fucking it all up. But, to be fair, Leonardo had some strong points. Smart. Imaginative. Right?”

  Still no reaction beyond a dead stare.

  Gurney went on. “You have to admit that the Hector idea was pretty good. Inventing the perfect fall guy in case anyone caught on to all those Mapleshade graduates being unlocatable. So the mythical Hector ‘appeared on the scene’ just before the girls started disappearing. That shows forward thinking on Leonardo’s part. Real initiative. Good planning. But it came with a price. He was just too fucking crazy, wasn’t he? That’s why you finally had to do it. Backed into a corner. Crisis management.” Gurney shook his head, looked with dismay at the huge bloodstain on the rug between them. “Too fucking little, Giotto. Too fucking late.”

  “The fuck did you call me?”

  Gurney returned the man’s granite stare for a long moment before answering, “Don’t waste my time. I have a deal for you. You have five minutes to take it or leave it.” He thought he saw a tiny crack in the stone. For maybe a quarter of a second.

  “The fuck did you call me?”

  “Giotto, get it through your head. It’s over. The Skards are done. The Skards are fucking done. You get it? Clock’s ticking. Here’s the deal. You hand me the names and addresses of all Karnala’s customers, all the Jordan Ballston creeps you do business with. I especially want the addresses where s
ome Mapleshade girls might still be alive. You give me all that and I give you a guarantee that you will live through the process of being arrested.”

  The little man laughed, a sound like gravel being crushed under a blanket. “You got amazing balls, Gurney. You’re in the wrong fucking business.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re down to four and a half minutes. Time fucking flies. So if you choose not to give me the addresses I want, here’s what’s going to happen: There will be a careful, by-the-book attempt to take you into custody. You, however, will foolishly try to escape. In doing so you will endanger the life of a police officer, making it necessary to shoot you. You will be shot twice. The first bullet, a nine-millimeter hollow-point, will blow your balls off. The second will sever your spinal cord between the first and second cervical vertebrae, resulting in irreversible paralysis. This combination of wounds will convert you into a soprano in a wheelchair in a prison hospital for the rest of your fucking life. It will also give your fellow inmates an opportunity to piss in your face whenever they feel the urge. Okay? You understand the deal?”

  Again came the laugh. A laugh that would make Hardwick’s nasty rasp sound sweet. “You know why you’re still alive, Gurney? Because I can’t fucking wait to hear what you’re going to say next.”

  Gurney looked at his watch. “Three minutes and twenty seconds to go.”

  There were no voices coming from the monitor now—just moans, hacking coughs, a sharp little scream, crying.

  “What the fuck?” said Hardwick. “Jesus, what the fuck?”

  Gurney looked at the screen, listened to the piteous sounds, turned to Hardwick, spoke with deliberate clarity and evenness. “In case I forget, remember that the door opener is in Ashton’s pocket.”