by John Verdon
Esti’s eyes narrowed, her expression shifting from disbelief to speculation. “You mean, like, use the media—maybe that asshole Bork—to offer Panikos some kind of deal to reveal who hired him?”
“Bork could play a role, but not to offer that kind of deal. I think our little Peter Pan operates on a different wavelength.”
“What wavelength?”
“Well … just look at what we know about him.”
Esti shrugged. “We know he’s a professional killer.”
Gurney nodded. “What else?”
“He’s an expensive one, specializing in difficult contracts.”
“Impossible jobs that no one else will take—that’s the way Donny Angel put it. What else?”
“A psychopath, yes?”
Hardwick chimed in. “The psychopath from hell. With bad dreams. The way I see it, this wee fucker is one highly motivated murder machine—angry, crazy, bloodthirsty, and not about to change his ways any time soon. How about you, Sherlock? You got any other insights for us?”
Gurney swallowed the last mouthful of his lukewarm coffee. “I’ve just been trying to put all this together to see what it adds up to. His absolute insistence on doing everything his own way, his high intelligence combined with a total lack of empathy, his pathological rage, his killing skills, his appetite for mass murder—all that combined would seem to make little Peter the ultimate control freak from hell. Then there’s the final explosive element—the loose end, the secret, whatever it is that he’s desperate to conceal and afraid we may discover. Oh, and one more thing Angelidis told me—I almost forgot to mention it—little Peter likes to sing while he’s shooting people. Put all that together and it looks like a recipe for an interesting endgame.”
“Or a fucking world-class disaster,” said Hardwick.
“I guess that would be the downside.”
Chapter 50
Jabbing the Madman
“Is there an upside?” Hope and apprehension were vying with each other in Esti’s expression. Apprehension was winning.
“I think so.” Gurney’s tone was matter of fact. “My sense of Panikos is that his ultimate motivation is hatred, probably directed at every human being on earth. But his tactics, his planning—those aspects are steady and well thought out. His success in his profession depends on maintaining a delicate balance between his hot appetite for killing and his cold planning process. It’s evident in the behavior we’re seeing, and Donny Angel told me as much. On the outside Panikos is a reliable businessman who accepts difficult assignments with equanimity. And inside there’s a fierce little monster whose main pleasure—maybe only pleasure—is murder.”
Hardwick let out his harsh bark of a laugh. “The wee Peter could be quite the eye-opening experience for an ‘inner child’ therapist.”
Gurney uttered a small laugh, despite himself.
Esti turned to him. “So he’s part planner, part psycho. The motive is crazy, but the method is rational. Let’s say you’re right. Where does it take us?”
“Since that delicate balance between madness and logic seems to work well for him, we need to upset it.”
“How?”
“By attacking its most accessible weak point.”
“Which is?”
“The secret he’s trying to protect. That’s our way in. Our way into his thinking. And our way into understanding Carl’s murder, and who ordered it.”
“Be nice if we knew what the precious fucking secret was,” interjected Hardwick.
Gurney shrugged. “All we have to do is make him think we know, or that we’re about to find out. It’s a game we need to play—inside his head.”
“And the point of this game?” asked Esti.
“To disrupt the careful calculation he relies on for his success and survival. We need to hammer a wedge between the core lunatic and his rational support system.”
“You’re losing me.”
“We apply pressure in a way that threatens his sense of control. If control is his most intense obsession, it’s also his greatest weakness. Take away a control freak’s feeling of control, and the result is panic-driven decisions.”
“You hear what the man is saying?” interjected Hardwick. “He plans to poke a mass murderer in the eye with a sharp stick to see what might happen.”
It was a way of putting it that seemed to resonate with Esti’s growing anxiety. She turned to Gurney. “Suppose what happens after we apply this ‘pressure’ is that Panikos kills another six or seven people. What then? We apply more pressure? And if he slaughters another dozen victims at random? What then?”
“I’m not saying there’s no risk. But the alternative is to let him fade back into the shadows. Right now we’ve pulled him up close to the surface. Almost within reach. I want to keep him there, stir up his fear, make him do something stupid. As for his potential slaughter of innocent people, we can take the random factor out of his decision. We’ll feed him a specific target and use it to trap him.”
“Target?” Esti’s chocolate-brown eyes widened.
“We have to get him focused where we want him. It’s not enough to just ratchet up the threat level and push him over the edge. We have to be able to contain the response we provoke—keep it aimed in a manageable direction, within a manageable time frame.”
She looked unconvinced.
Gurney went on. “We set him up, generate the reaction we want, then reel him in—at a time and place of our choosing.”
“You say it so easily. But it’s very risky, no?”
“Yes—but not as risky as the alternative. Jack described Peter Pan as a murder machine. I agree. That’s what he does. Always has. Ever since he was a child. Always will, if he gets his way. He’s like a fatal disease that no one has figured out how to stop. I don’t see any risk-free options. We either let the murder machine keep running, keep converting people into corpses, or we do what we can to jam it up.”
“Or,” Esti offered hesitantly, “we could turn over everything we have to BCI right now and let them deal with it. They’ve got the resources. We don’t. And those resources could—”
“Fuck BCI!” growled Hardwick.
Esti emitted a small sigh and turned to Gurney. “Dave? What do you say?”
Gurney said nothing. His mind had been ambushed by too vivid a memory. A sickening thump. A red BMW speeding away from the scene … down a long city street … turning a corner with squealing tires … disappearing … forever. Except in his memory. The victim of the hit-and-run lying twisted in the gutter. The little four-year-old boy. His own Danny. And the pigeon Danny had followed, unthinking, into the street—the pigeon rising on a flurry of wings, alarmed but untouched, flying away.
Why hadn’t he commandeered a car right there on the street?
Why hadn’t he pursued the killer, right then and there, to the gates of hell?
Sometimes the memory triggered tears. Sometimes just an aching in his throat. And sometimes a terrible anger.
The anger was what he felt now.
“Dave?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think it might be time to hand the case over to BCI?”
“Hand it over? And stop doing what we’re doing?”
She nodded. “It’s really within their—”
He cut her off. “No. Not yet.”
“What do you mean, not yet?”
“I don’t think we should let Panikos escape. And if we stop, that’s what will happen.”
Whatever remaining desire she might have had to argue the point seemed to melt away. Perhaps it was the granite in Gurney’s voice. Or the determination in his eyes. The message was clear. He wasn’t about to hand anything over to anyone.
Not while the killer was still within reach.
Not while the red BMW was still within sight.
After they took a break to check and respond to texts and voice mail, Gurney put on a third pot of coffee and opened the double doors to let in the balmy August air. As u
sual, he was surprised by the fragrances of warm earth, grass, wildflowers. It was as if he were incapable of remembering what nature smelled like.
When they were all resettled at the big table, Esti’s gaze met Gurney’s. “You’re the one who seems sure about how we should proceed. You have some specific steps in mind?”
“First we need to decide on the content of our message to Panikos. Then the channel of communication, the identity of the target we want him to zero in on, timing, necessary preparation, and—”
“Slow down, please, one thing at a time. The content of the message? You mean telling him we know something about this secret he’s protecting?”
“Right. And that we’re about to reveal it at some specific time.”
“And the channel? You mean how we actually get this message to him?”
“You said it yourself this morning. Criminal Conflict. Brian Bork. I’d bet that Panikos saw Bork’s interview with Lex, and he probably also saw Bork’s interview with Jack after the Cooperstown fires.”
Esti made a face. “I know I mentioned Bork—but now when I think about it, I can’t imagine our psycho assassin sitting around watching TV.”
“He may have a search engine alert set for certain names—Spalter, Gurikos, Bincher—so if there’s a promotion for an upcoming news program or anything else related to the case in the media, he’d be aware of it.”
She responded with an uneasy little nod.
There was a glint of excitement in Hardwick’s eyes. “I have an open invite from Asshole Bork to provide updates on the case. So I can plant whatever message we want.”
Esti turned toward Gurney. “Which brings us to the part of what you said that I don’t like the sound of. ‘The target.’ What did you mean by that?”
Hardwick interrupted. “Simple, babe. He wants to sic the wee Peter on us.”
She blinked. “Dave? That’s what you meant?”
“Only if we’re confident that we can maintain control of the situation—and that he’d be falling into our trap, not us into his.”
Her expression was a picture of worry.
“But,” Gurney added quickly, “I’m not really making ‘us’ the target.”
She stared at him. “Who, then?”
He smiled. “Me.”
Hardwick shook his head. “It would make more sense for me to be the target. I was the one who appeared on Criminal Conflict. He’ll see me as enemy number one.”
“More like an enemy of the state police, if I recall your rant.”
Hardwick ignored the criticism and leaned forward, raising a forefinger to emphasize what he was about to say. “You know, there’s another angle here. I’ve been thinking about the shots that cut my power and phone lines. In addition to the possible warning—‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’—there might have been a second purpose. Something more practical.” He paused, making sure he had their full attention.
Gurney had a feeling he knew what was coming.
“That Bolo guy you talked to claimed that Panikos visited the Axton Avenue apartment building almost a week before he whacked Carl. The question is, Why? Well, one reason occurred to me. An obsessive-compulsive hit man might want to zero in his rifle scope ahead of time—at the actual location. What do you think?”
Gurney nodded admiringly. He liked being reassured from time to time that beneath Hardwick’s irritating shell there lurked a solid, insightful detective.
Esti frowned. “What’s that got to do with the shots at your house?”
“If he could put my power lines in the crosshairs of his infrared scope and cut them cleanly, he’d know he could put a bullet between my eyes at that same range any time I stepped onto my front porch.”
Esti looked like she was trying not to appear shaken. “On-site practice? Preparation? You think that was the purpose of those shots from the hill?”
It was clear from the speculative excitement in Hardwick’s eyes that that’s exactly what he thought.
Then Esti said something.
And Hardwick answered her.
Then she said something else.
And he responded to that as well.
But none of their words registered in Gurney’s consciousness—not a single syllable after Esti’s use of the phrase “those shots from the hill.”
Because his mind had made a leap from Hardwick’s property to his own. And all he could think about now was what one possible shot from Barrow Hill might have done.
Twenty minutes later, his freshly soiled garden shovel propped in the corner, Gurney stood at the utility sink in the mudroom. He was gazing down in tense concentration at the roughly washed carcass of the rooster he’d just unearthed from its stone-covered grave. On the muddy drain board next to the sink lay one of Madeleine’s silk scarves, now dirty and bloodstained, which she’d used to wrap Horace’s body.
Esti and Hardwick, having received no answers to their repeated questions, stood at the doorway, watching with growing concern. Gurney, holding his breath intermittently to avoid the rotten odor, bent over the dead bird, studying as closely as he could the damage that had ended its life. When he was satisfied that his informal postmortem had told him as much as it was going to, he straightened up and turned around, explaining.
“Madeleine had four chickens. One was a rooster. She named him Horace.” He felt a little stab of sadness at saying the name. “When she found him out on the grass the other day, she thought a weasel had gotten him and bitten his head off. Someone told us weasels will do that.” He felt his lips growing stiff with anger as he spoke. “She was right, in a way. It was a weasel with a sniper rifle.”
At first, Esti’s expression showed only bafflement. Then the significance of Gurney’s comment struck her. “Oh, dear Jesus!”
“Fuck!” said Hardwick.
“I don’t know whether this was about sighting-in his scope for future reference or just sending me a back-off message,” said Gurney. “But whichever it was, I’m apparently on the little bastard’s mind.”
Chapter 51
The Plan
The dead rooster, the apparent method of its execution, and the possible motives behind it had further darkened the mood of the meeting.
Even Hardwick seemed subdued, standing now at the open French doors, gazing across the western field at Barrow Hill. He glanced back at Gurney, who was at the table with Esti. “You figure the shot came from that spot you pointed out before, at the top of the trail?”
“That’d be my guess.”
“The position of things—house, hill, woods, trails—is kind of similar to the situation at my place. Only difference is that he hit my house at night, your rooster in the daylight.”
“Right.”
“Can you think of any reason for that?”
Gurney shrugged. “Only the obvious one. Night’s the most dramatic time to cut a power line. But if you want to shoot one of our chickens, you need to do it in the daytime. They’re locked up in the barn at night.”
As Hardwick appeared to be mulling this over, a silence fell—broken by Esti.
“So you guys are figuring Panikos has given you both the same warning—to get off the case because he’s got you in his sights?”
“Something like that,” said Gurney.
“Well, let me ask the big question. How long before he moves from shooting your chickens to …?” She let her voice trail off meaningfully.
“If he really wants us to back off, then our backing off might prevent any further action. If we don’t back off, then further action might come quickly.”
She took a couple of seconds to absorb this. “Okay. What do we do? Or not do?”
“We proceed.” Had Gurney been expressing his intention to refill the saltshaker, his tone could not have been more matter of fact. “We proceed by giving him a compelling reason to kill me. Plus an urgent deadline. We don’t have to pick a location—he’s already picked it.”
“You mean … here, at your house?”
/>
“Yes.”
“How do you imagine he would …?”
“There are lots of possibilities. Best guess? He’ll try to set fire to the house, with me in it. Probably with a remotely detonated incendiary device, like the ones he used at Cooperstown. Then shoot me when I come out.”
She was getting wide-eyed again. “How do you know he’ll go after you first and not Jack? Or even me?”
“With the help of Brian Bork, we can point him in the right direction.”
As Gurney expected, Hardwick objected—reiterating his argument that he’d already established himself as a threat to Panikos, so it would be easy to set himself up as a credible target—but the argument now seemed to lack both foundation and conviction.
The rooster, it seemed, had tilted the game toward Gurney.
All that remained to be discussed were details, responsibilities, and logistics.
An hour later, with a mix of determination and misgiving, they’d agreed on a plan.
Esti, who’d been jotting down notes during the discussion, appeared the least comfortable at its conclusion. When Gurney asked about her concerns, she hesitated. “Maybe … you could just run through the thing one more time? If you wouldn’t mind?”
“Mind, hell,” growled Hardwick. “Sherlock loves this strategic shit.” He stood up from the table. “While you’re running through it one more time, I’ll be doing something useful, like making the necessary phone calls. We need to get Bork on board ASAP, and we need to make sure SSS has the stuff we need in stock.”
Scranton Surveillance & Survival was a kind of technology and weaponry supermarket catering to a mixed clientele of security firms, survivalists, serious militia guys, and garden-variety gun lovers. Its “SSS” logo was composed of three rattlesnakes, fangs bared. The sales-clerks wore commando-style berets and fatigues. Gurney had visited the place once out of curiosity and gotten an uncomfortable feeling about it. It was, however, the most convenient source for the kind of electronic equipment they needed.
Hardwick had volunteered to make the trip. But first he wanted to make sure the stuff was in stock. He turned to Gurney. “Where do you get your strongest cell signal up here?”
