Peter Pan Must Die (Dave Gurney, No. 4)

by John Verdon

  In the real world, we must connect the few dots we have and guess at a pattern that makes workable sense. It’s an imperfect system. So is life itself. The danger arises not so much from the scarcity of dots as from the unconscious personal agenda that prioritizes certain dots over others, an agenda that wants the pattern to look a certain way. Our perceptions of events are warped more by the power of our emotions than by the weakness of our data.

  In this light, the situation was simple. Klemper wanted Kay to be guilty and therefore came to believe that she was. Dots that didn’t fit the pattern were devalued or ignored. Rules that impeded a “righteous” ending were similarly devalued or ignored.

  But there was another way of looking at it.

  Since the process of moving to a conclusion on the basis of incomplete data was natural and necessary, the common warning against doing so really amounted to no more than a warning not to leap to the wrong conclusion. The truth was that any conclusion might be premature. The final verdict on the validity of the leap would be rendered by the validity of the result.

  That thought raised a disquieting possibility.

  Suppose Klemper’s conclusion was correct.

  Suppose the hate-filled Klemper had arrived at the truth. Suppose his sloppy procedures and possible felonies constituted a rotten route to the right end. Suppose Kay Spalter was, in fact, guilty of murdering her husband. Gurney had no great appetite for helping to free a stone-cold killer, no matter how deeply flawed her trial may have been.

  And there was yet another possibility. Suppose Klemper’s hell-bent determination to have Kay put away had nothing to do with limited perceptions or faulty conclusions. Suppose it was a cynical and corrupt effort, bought and paid for by a third party who wanted the case closed as quickly as possible.

  Suppose, suppose, suppose. Gurney was finding the echo irritating and unproductive—and the need for more facts compelling.

  The dissonant chords of Madeleine’s cello piece were growing louder.

  Chapter 28

  Like the Crack of a Whip

  After listening to Gurney on the phone recounting the content of his meeting with Adonis Angelidis, including the grotesque aspects of the Gus Gurikos murder, Jack Hardwick was uncharacteristically silent. Then, instead of criticizing him once again for departing from the narrow issues that would drive the appeal process, he asked Gurney to come to his house for a more thorough discussion of the case status.

  “Now?” Gurney glanced at the clock. It was nearly seven-thirty, and the sun had already slipped down behind the western ridge.

  “Now would be good. This thing is getting way too weird.”

  As big a surprise as the invitation was, it wasn’t one Gurney was going to argue with. A thorough, all-issues-on-the-table discussion was definitely needed.

  Another surprise greeted him when he arrived thirty-five minutes later at Hardwick’s rented farmhouse—at the lonely end of a dirt road, high in the darkening hills outside the tiny village of Dillweed. In his headlights he could see a second car parked next to the red GTO—a bright blue Mini Cooper. Evidently the man had a visitor.

  Gurney was aware that Hardwick had been involved in quite a few relationships in the past, but he hadn’t imagined any of those women looking quite as dramatic as the one who opened the door.

  If it wasn’t for her intelligent, aggressive eyes that seemed to be assessing him from the first instant, Gurney would have been easily distracted by the rest of her—a figure somewhere between athletic and voluptuous, boldly displayed in cutoff jeans and a loose scoop-neck T-shirt. She was barefoot with red toenails, caramel-tan skin, and ebony hair cut short in a way that emphasized her full lips and prominent cheekbones. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she had a definite presence—not unlike Hardwick himself.

  A moment later the man appeared beside her with a proprietary grin.

  “Come in. Thanks for making the trip.”

  Gurney stepped through the doorway into the front room. What he remembered from previous visits as a Spartan box of a room had acquired some warmer touches: a colorful carpet, a framed print of orange poppies bending in a breeze, a vase of pussy willow branches, a lush plant in a massive earthenware pot, two new armchairs, a nice pine sideboard, and a round breakfast table with three ladder-back chairs in the corner of the room nearest the kitchen. This woman had evidently inspired some changes.

  Gurney surveyed the scene approvingly. “Very nice, Jack. Definite improvement.”

  Hardwick nodded. “Yeah, I agree.” Then he laid his hand on the woman’s half-bare shoulder and said, “Dave, I’d like you to meet BCI investigator Esti Moreno.”

  The introduction caught Gurney off-balance, and it showed, which prompted a bark of a laugh from Hardwick.

  He recovered quickly, putting out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Esti.”

  “A pleasure, Dave.” Her grip was strong, the skin on her palm surprisingly callused. He remembered Hardwick mentioning her name as a source of information on the original murder investigation, as well as on the shortcomings of Mick Klemper. He wondered how engaged she was in the Hardwick-Bincher project, and how she viewed it.

  As if demonstrating a sense for what he was thinking, she got to the point with a remarkable lack of preamble. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I’ve been trying to convince this man here to look past Kay Spalter’s legal appeal issues and pay some attention to the murder itself. Now murders, yes? At least three? Maybe more?” Her voice was throaty, with a hint of a Spanish accent.

  Gurney smiled. “Are you making any progress with him?”

  “I’m persistent.” She glanced at Hardwick, then back at Gurney. “I think your phone call earlier this evening about the nails in the eyes finally got to him, yes?”

  Hardwick’s lips tightened in an expression of distaste.

  “Yes, definitely the nails in the eyes,” she repeated with a conspiratorial wink at Gurney. “Everybody’s got some special sensitivity, something that gets their attention, yes? So now maybe we can let Lex-the-Lawyer deal with the Court of Appeals, and we can deal with the crime—the true thing, not the Klemper bullshit.” She articulated the man’s name with evident disgust. “The issue is digging up what really happened. Putting it all together. That’s what you think needs to be done, right?”

  “You seem to know my thoughts pretty well.” He wondered if she knew what kind of thoughts were being generated by that revealing T-shirt.

  “Jack told me things about you. And I’m a good listener.”

  Hardwick was starting to look restless. “Maybe we ought to make some coffee, sit down, and get to it.”

  An hour later, at the table in the corner, their coffee cups refilled, yellow pads scribbled with notes in front of them, they were circling back through the key points.

  “So we agree that the three murders must be related to one another?” said Esti, tapping the tip of her pen on her pad.

  “Assuming the autopsy on the mother is consistent with murder,” said Hardwick.

  Esti looked at Gurney. “Just before you arrived, I reached out to someone in the ME’s office. She’s supposed to get back to me tomorrow. But the fact that the shooter cased the cemetery scene in Long Falls before her ‘accident’ is pretty suggestive. So let’s agree for now we’re talking about three related murders.”

  Hardwick was staring into his coffee cup as though it contained some unidentifiable substance. “I’ve got a problem with this. According to Gurney’s Greek mob buddy, Carl went to Fat Gus to set up a hit on somebody—nobody knows who. The target finds out about this and, to keep it from happening, hits Carl first. Then he hits Gus, for good measure. I have this right?”

  Gurney nodded. “Except for the ‘buddy’ part.”

  Hardwick ignored the objection. “Okay, so what this says to me is that Carl and his target were in, like, the ultimate high-stakes race to whack each other. I mean, the guy who makes the first hit wins, right?”

  Gurney nodd
ed again.

  Hardwick went on. “So why would a guy in that situation pick such a time-consuming, pain-in-the-ass way to set Carl up? I mean, knowing there’s a contract on your life creates some urgency. Wouldn’t it make more sense under the circumstances to just put on a ski mask, walk into the Spalter Realty office, and pop the son of a bitch? Deal with the issue in half a day instead of a week? And the whole idea of hitting the mother first? Just to get Carl into the cemetery? That feels fucking weird to me.”

  It didn’t feel right to Gurney either.

  “Unless,” said Esti, “the hit on the mother wasn’t just a setup to put Carl in a predictable place at a predictable time. Maybe the mother was a target for another reason. In fact, maybe she was the main target, and Carl was secondary. You ever think of it that way?”

  They paused to think about it.

  “I have another problem,” said Hardwick. “I get that there’s a connection between the Mary and Carl murders. Got to be. And I get that there’s some other kind of connection between the Carl and Gus murders—maybe what Donny Angel said, maybe not. So I’m okay with a connection between one and two, and between two and three, but somehow the one-two-three sequence all together doesn’t feel so good.”

  Gurney felt a similar discomfort. “By the way, do we know for sure that Carl was number two and Gus was number three?”

  Esti frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “From the way Angelidis talked about it, I’ve been assuming that was the sequence, but there’s no reason it had to be that way. All I really know is that Carl and Gus were hit the same day. I’d like to get the timing confirmed.”

  “How?”

  “We have a precise time for Carl in the case file. But based on what Angelidis told me, I’m not so sure about Gus. There are two sources I can think of, but it’ll depend on what kind of contacts we have—either with the county ME’s office where the Gurikos autopsy was done, or with whoever in OCTF has access to that file.”

  “Let me deal with that,” said Esti. “I think I know somebody.”

  “Great.” Gurney gave her an appreciative nod. “In addition to an estimated time of death, see if you can get copies of the initial photos in the autopsy sequence.”

  “The shots taken before he was opened up?”

  “Right—the body on the table, plus any detail shots of the head and neck.”

  “You want to see exactly how he was nailed?” A quirky grin revealed more relish for this kind of thing than most women would have. Or men, for that matter.

  The normally impervious Hardwick grimaced in disgust. Then he turned to Gurney. “You figure that horrible shit was some kind of message?”

  “Ritualistic stuff usually is, unless it’s an intentional distraction.”

  “Which do you think this was?” asked Esti.

  Gurney shrugged. “I’m not sure. But the message seems clear enough.”

  Hardwick looked like he was biting down on a bad tooth. “You mean like … ‘I hate you so fucking much I want to hammer spikes into your brain.’ Something like that?”

  “Don’t forget the neck,” said Esti.

  “Larynx,” said Gurney.

  They both looked at him.

  She spoke first. “What do you mean?”

  “I’d be willing to bet the target of the fifth nail was Gus’s larynx.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the voice organ.”

  “So?”

  “Eyes, ears, larynx. Sight, hearing, voice. All destroyed.”

  “And this means what to you?” said Hardwick.

  “I may be wrong, but what comes to mind is ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’ ”

  Esti nodded. “That makes sense! But who’s the message for? The victim? Or someone else?”

  “That depends on how crazy the killer is.”

  “How so?”

  “A psychopath who kills for an emotional release usually leaves a symbolic message that reflects the nature of his own pathology—often by mutilating some part of the victim. The message contributes to the feeling of release. It’s primarily a communication between him and his victim. Probably also a communication between him and someone in his childhood, someone involved in the root of the pathology—usually one of his parents.”

  “You think that’s what the Gurikos nails-in-the-head thing was?”

  Gurney shook his head. “If the Gurikos murder was connected to the two Spalter murders, mother and son, I’d say it was driven more by a practical goal than a compulsion.”

  Esti looked baffled. “A practical goal?”

  “It seems to me like the killer was advising someone to mind their own business, to keep quiet about something, and letting them know at the same time what would happen to them if they didn’t. The big questions are, who was the someone and what was the something.”

  “You have some ideas about that?”

  “Just guesses. The something may have been some fact about the first two murders.”

  Hardwick joined in. “Like the identity of the shooter?”

  “Or the motive,” said Gurney. “Or some incriminating detail.”

  Esti leaned forward. “Who do you think was the someone who was being warned?”

  “I don’t know enough about Gus’s connections to say. According to Angelidis, Gus hosted a regular Friday-night poker game. After the murder that day, the killer left Gus’s door unlocked. That could have been an oversight, or it could have been on purpose—so that someone in the poker group would find the body when they arrived for the game that evening. Maybe the ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ message was intended for someone in the group or even for Angelidis himself. OCTF might know more about the individuals involved. They may even have had Gus’s house under surveillance.”

  Esti frowned. “I’ll find out what I can from my friend, but … she might not have access to everything. I don’t want to put her in an awkward position.”

  Hardwick’s jaw muscles tightened. “Be careful dealing with those task force fuckers. You think the FBI is bad, they’re nothing compared to the elite organized crime boys.” He emphasized the adjective with a comical level of contempt. But there was no humor in his eyes.

  “I know what they’re like, and I know what I’m doing.” She stared challengingly at Hardwick for a moment. “Let’s go back to the beginning. How do we feel about the ‘preemptive strike’ explanation—that Carl was hit by his own intended victim?”

  Hardwick shook his head. “Could be the truth, more likely it’s crap. Nice story, but consider the source. Why should we believe anything from Donny Angel?”

  She looked at Gurney. “Dave?”

  “I don’t think belief enters into it. What Angelidis said happened could have happened. It’s a reasonable enough scenario. In fact, we heard another story that’s consistent with it. Kay Spalter mentioned that Carl used to play poker with a guy who arranged murders for the mob.”

  Hardwick waved his hand dismissively. “Doesn’t prove a damn thing. Sure as hell doesn’t prove that Carl hired Gus to have someone killed.”

  Esti looked back at Gurney.

  Gurney just shrugged. “Right. No proof. But still a possibility. A credible link.”

  “Well,” said Esti, “if we think the Angelidis story is possible—that Carl’s target ended up being the murderer—shouldn’t we make a list of people Carl might have wanted dead?”

  Hardwick uttered an incredulous little grunt.

  She turned on him. “You have a better idea?”

  He shrugged. “Go ahead, make a list.”

  “Okay, I will.” She picked up her pen, held it over her pad. “Dave—any suggestions?”

  “Jonah.”

  “Carl’s brother? Why?”

  “Because if Jonah were out of the way, Carl would have sole control of Spalter Realty and all its assets, which he could convert into cash to finance his political plans in a big way. Interestingly, Jonah would have the same motive to
get rid of Carl—get control of Spalter Realty assets, which he could use to finance the expansion of his Cyberspace Cathedral.”

  Esti raised an eyebrow. “Cyber …?”

  “Long story. Bottom line, Jonah’s got a lot of ambition and could use a lot of money.”

  “Okay, I’ll put his name down. Who else?”

  “Alyssa.”

  She blinked, seemed to have some unpleasant thoughts before making another note.

  Hardwick’s lip curled. “His own daughter?”

  Esti responded first. “I overheard enough of Klemper on the phone with Alyssa to get the impression that her relationship with her father … wasn’t what you’d call a normal father-daughter relationship. It sounded like Carl had forced her to have sex with him.”

  “You told me that before,” said Hardwick. “I don’t like thinking about shit like that.”

  The silence that followed was broken by Gurney. “Just look at it from a practical perspective. Alyssa was a longtime drug addict with no interest in recovery. Carl wanted to be governor of New York. He had a lot to lose—in the present and the future. If he did have an incestuous relationship with Alyssa, presumably going back into her childhood, that would create a major blackmail opportunity—a hard thing for a drug addict with an expensive habit to resist. Suppose that Alyssa’s demands became exorbitant. Suppose that Carl came to view her as an unbearable threat to everything he wanted. We’ve heard from a few people that he was an obsessively ambitious man and capable of anything.”

  Hardwick had his acid-reflux expression. “You’re saying that Alyssa might have discovered that he was arranging for her removal, and that she hired someone to hit him first?”

  “Something like that. At least that would be consistent with the Angelidis theory. A simpler version would be that it was entirely her initiative—that Carl never made a move against her—that she was after his money, pure and simple, and had him killed.”

  “But according to his will, Kay was his sole beneficiary. Alyssa wasn’t going to get anything. So what good would—”