by John Verdon
This was not a can of worms Gurney had planned to open, but now he saw no alternative. “His name is Petros Panikos. He’s a professional killer.”
“He’s a what?”
The three young women assigned to mind the gate were standing in a row behind the cop, wide-eyed.
Gurney was straining to maintain his patience. “Petros Panikos killed seven people in Cooperstown this week. He may have caused the death of a police officer half an hour ago. He’s in your fairgrounds right now. Is this getting through to you?”
The cop put his hand on the butt of his holstered gun. “Who the hell are you?”
“My ID told you exactly who I am—David Gurney, Detective First Grade, NYPD-Retired. I also told you I’m in pursuit of a murder suspect. Now I’m going to tell you something else. You’re creating an unnecessary obstruction to his capture. If your obstruction results in his escape, your career is over. You hear what I’m saying, Officer?”
The muddy hostility in the cop’s eyes was sharpening into something more dangerous. His lips drew back, revealing the tips of clenched yellow teeth. He took a slow step backward. With his hand tightening on his gun, the movement was far more threatening than a step forward. “That’s it. Get off the bike.”
Gurney looked past him and spoke to the row of gaping young women in a loud, deliberate voice. “Call your head of security! Get him out here to this gate—NOW!”
The cop turned around, raising his free hand in a stop gesture. “You don’t need to call anybody. Nobody. No call. I’m taking care of this myself.”
It struck Gurney that this might be his only chance. Risk be damned—losing Panikos was not an acceptable option. He gave the throttle a quick twist, pulled the handlebars down to the right, spun the machine in a one-eighty, and, with the rear tire smoking, shot back down into the alleyway behind the motor homes. Halfway to the main concourse, he made a sharp turn in between two of the big vehicles and found himself threading his way through a maze of RVs of all shapes and sizes. He soon emerged onto one of the fair’s narrower concourses, along which exhibitor tents displayed everything from wildly colored Peruvian hats to chain-sawed bear sculptures. He abandoned the BSA in a half-hidden space between two of the tents, one selling Walnut Crossing sweatshirts and the other straw cowboy hats.
On an impulse, he bought one of each, then stopped in a restroom farther along on the same concourse to cover the dark, short-sleeved shirt he was wearing with the light gray sweatshirt. He moved the Beretta from his ankle holster to the sweatshirt pocket, and checked his appearance in the restroom mirror. The change, along with the brim of the cowboy hat shielding his eyes, convinced him he’d be less recognizable, at least at a distance, either by Panikos or the troublesome cop.
It occurred to him then that Panikos might be taking similar steps to blend in with his surroundings—and that raised an obvious question. As Gurney began searching the crowd for the little man, what characteristics was he looking for?
His height—which had been estimated at between four-ten and five-two—would put him in the range of most middle-schoolers. Unfortunately, middle-schoolers probably comprised at least several hundred of the approximately ten thousand visitors at the fair. Were there other criteria that could narrow the profile? The security videos had been useful in establishing certain facts, but for the purpose of generating a likeness independent of the original context, their value was limited—since so much of Panikos’s hair and face had been covered with sunglasses, headband, scarf. His nose had been visible and distinctive, as well as his mouth, but little else—little that would facilitate the quick scanning of faces in a moving crowd.
The stressed security girl at the gate said she thought he was wearing a black jacket, but Gurney gave that little weight. She hadn’t sounded sure, and even if she had, pressured eyewitness reports like that were more often dead wrong than anywhere near right. And whatever he might have been wearing when he ran the gate, Panikos could have altered his appearance as quickly and easily as Gurney just had. So, for the moment at least, he was looking for a short, thin person with a sharp nose and a childlike mouth.
As if to underscore the insufficiency of that description, an excited cluster of at least a dozen kids—ten-year-olds, eleven-year-olds, maybe twelve-year-olds—crossed the concourse just ahead of him. Perhaps half of them would fall outside the size parameters either because of their height or pudginess, but Panikos could easily blend in with the other half.
In fact, suppose he had blended in. Suppose Panikos was among them, right there in front of him. How could Gurney pick him out?
It was a discouraging challenge—particularly since the whole group had evidently visited one of the fair’s face painters, obscuring their features under the visages of what Gurney assumed were comic-book superheroes. And how many similar little groups might there be—all circulating through the fairgrounds at that moment, with Panikos as a potential hanger-on?
It was then that he noticed what the members of this particular group were doing. They were approaching other fairgoers, adults primarily, with bunches of flowers. He picked up his pace and followed them onto the larger concourse to observe more closely what was happening.
They were selling the flowers—or, more accurately, giving a free bunch to anyone who would make a minimum ten-dollar donation to the Walnut Crossing Flood Relief Fund. But the thing that captured his attention—one hundred percent of his attention—was the appearance of these bouquets.
The flowers were rust-red mums, and the stems were wrapped in yellow tissue—seemingly identical to those left by Panikos on the rock by the tarn.
What did this mean? Processing the implications, Gurney came quickly to the conclusion that the flowers by the tarn had most likely come from the fair, which meant that Panikos had been there prior to his visit to Barrow Hill, which raised an interesting question:
Why?
Surely he hadn’t gone to the fair originally for the purpose of acquiring a bouquet to bring to Gurney’s property—since he would’ve had no way of knowing such a thing would be available there and a local florist would have been a more obvious source in any event. No, he’d gone to the fair for some other reason, and the mums had been secondary.
So what was the primary reason? It sure as hell wasn’t for the rustic amusement, cotton candy, and cow-flop bingo. Then why on earth …?
The ringing of his phone interrupted his train of thought.
It was Hardwick, highly agitated. “Shit, man! Are you all right?”
“I think so. What’s going on?”
“That’s what I want to know! Where the fuck are you?”
“I’m at the fair. So is Panikos.”
“Then what the hell’s happening at your place?”
“How do you know—?”
“I’m out on the county route, approaching your turnoff, and there’s a fucking convoy—two trooper cruisers, a sheriff’s car, and a BCI SUV—all heading up your road. Fuck’s going on?”
“Klemper’s up there by my house. Dead. Long story. Looks like the first responders found the body and called for help. The convoy you see would be the second wave.”
“Dead? Mick the Dick? Dead how?”
Gurney gave him the fastest run-through he could—from the flat tire to the lumber explosion to the fatal joist hanger in Klemper’s neck to the flowers on Barrow Hill to the flowers at the fair.
Reviewing it all underscored in his own mind his need to call Kyle ASAP.
Hardwick listened in complete silence to the narration of events.
“What you need to do,” said Gurney, “is get over here to the fairgrounds. You’ve seen the same videos I have, so your chance of recognizing Panikos is as good as mine.”
“Which is close to zero.”
“I know that. But we’re got to try. He’s here, somewhere. He came here for a reason.”
“What reason?”
“I have no idea. But he was here earlier today, and now he’s here
again. It’s not a coincidence.”
“Look, I know you think that getting Panikos is the key to everything, but don’t forget that somebody hired him, and I’m thinking it’s Jonah.”
“You find out something new?”
“Just what my gut tells me, that’s all. There’s something off about that slimy bastard.”
“Something beyond a fifty-million-dollar motive?”
“Yeah. I think so. I think he’s way too smiley, way too cool.”
“Maybe it’s just the charming Spalter gene pool.”
Hardwick produced a phlegmy laugh. “Not a pool I’d want to swim in.”
Gurney was getting antsy to check in with Kyle, antsy to start looking for Panikos. “Okay, Jack. Hurry up. Call me when you get here.”
As he was ending the call, he heard the first explosion.
Chapter 58
Ashes, Ashes
He’d recognized the sound as the muffled whump of a small incendiary device.
As soon as he reached the scene, two concourses over, his impression was confirmed. A small booth was engulfed in flames and smoke, but already two men with FAIR SECURITY armbands were hurrying toward it with fire extinguishers and shouting at the onlookers to step back out of the way. Two female security people arrived and began working their way around to the rear of the booth, repeatedly calling out, “Anyone inside? Anyone inside?” An emergency vehicle with lights flashing and siren blaring was making its way down the middle of the concourse.
Seeing there was no immediate contribution he could make to the effort, Gurney focused instead on the crowd within sight of the fire. Arsonists have a well-known proclivity for observing their handiwork, but whatever hope he might have had of spotting someone matching even the most general description of Peter Pan soon evaporated. But then he noticed something else. The half-burnt sign above the booth said WALNUT CROSSING FLOOD RELIEF. And amid the debris the explosion had scattered onto the concourse were charred bouquets of rust-red mums.
It seemed that Panikos had a love-hate relationship with chrysanthemums, or maybe with all flowers, or with anything that reminded him of Florencia. But that alone couldn’t explain his presence at the fair. There was another possibility, of course. A more frightening one. Major public events were attractive venues for the making of memorable statements.
Was it conceivable that the purpose of Panikos’s earlier visit to the fair that day was to lay the groundwork for such a statement? Specifically, might he have mined the place with explosives? Was the destruction of the flower stand only the opening sentence of his message?
Was this possible scenario something Gurney needed to share immediately with Fair Security? With the Walnut Crossing PD? With BCI? Or would an attempt to explain such a scenario take more time than it was worth? After all, if it was true, if that was the reality they were facing, by the time the story was told and believed, it would be too late to stop the event.
As crazy as the conclusion seemed, Gurney decided that going it alone was the only feasible route. It was a route that depended on the successful identification of Peter Pan—a task that he realized was close to impossible. But there were no other options on the table.
So he started doing the only thing he could do. He started making his way through the crowd, using height as the first screen, weight as the second, facial structure as the third.
As he made his way through the next concourse, checking not only the individuals in the flowing crowd but also the customers at each booth and each exhibitor’s tent, an ironic thought came to mind: The upside of the worst-case scenario—that Peter Pan had come to the fair to blow it up piece by piece—was that he’d be there for a while. And as long as he was there, it was possible to catch him. Before Gurney could wrestle with the edgy moral question of how much human and material destruction he’d be willing to trade to get his hands on Peter Pan, Hardwick called—announcing that he’d arrived at the main gate and asking where they should get together.
“We don’t need to get together,” said Gurney. “We can cover more ground separately.”
“Fine. So what do I do—just start searching for the midget?”
“As best you can, based on your memory of the images on the security videos. You might want to pay special attention to groups of kids.”
“The purpose being …?”
“He’d want to be as inconspicuous as possible. A five-foot-tall male adult is attention-getting, but a kid that size isn’t, so there’s a good chance he’s made himself look like a kid. Facial skin can be an age giveaway, so I’d expect he’d find a way to obscure that. A lot of kids tonight have their faces painted, and that would be an obvious solution.”
“I get that, but why would he be in a group?”
“Again, inconspicuousness. A kid alone attracts more attention than one with other kids.”
Hardwick uttered a sigh, making it sound like the ultimate expression of skepticism. “Sounds like a lot of guesswork to me.”
“I won’t argue with that. One more thing. Assume that he’s armed, and don’t underestimate him. Remember, he’s alive and well, and a hell of a lot of people who crossed paths with him are dead.”
“What’s the drill if I think I have him ID’d?”
“Keep him in sight and call me. I’ll do the same. That’s the point when we need to back each other up. By the way, he blew up a flower stand here right after your last call.”
“Blew it up?”
“Sounded like a low-impact incendiary. Probably like the ones at Cooperstown.”
“Why a flower stand?”
“I’m not a psychoanalyst, Jack, but flowers—especially mums—seem to mean something to him.”
“You know ‘mum’ is the Brit word for ‘mom,’ right?”
“Sure, but—”
A series of rapid-fire explosions cut off his reply—propelling him down into an instinctive crouch. He sensed that the blasts had come from somewhere above him.
Quickly scanning the area around him, he got the phone back up to his ear in time to hear Hardwick yell, “Christ! What did he blow up now?”
The answer came in a second series of similar explosions—with geometric lines of light and bursts of colored sparks streaking across the night sky. Gurney’s tension was released in a sharp single-syllable laugh. “Fireworks! It’s just the summer-fair fireworks.”
“Fireworks? What the fuck for? Fourth of July was a month ago.”
“Who the hell knows? It’s a tradition at the fair. They do it every year.”
A third series went off—louder and gaudier.
“Assholes,” muttered Hardwick.
“Right. Anyway. We have work to do.”
Hardwick was silent for a few seconds, then switched directions abruptly. “So what do you think about Jonah? You didn’t react when I brought it up. You think I’m right?”
“Right about him being the mastermind behind Carl’s murder?”
“It’s all to his advantage. All of it. And you gotta admit, he’s one oily operator.”
“Where does Esti come out on this? She agree with you?”
“Hell, no. She’s all zeroed in on Alyssa. She’s convinced the whole thing was payback for Carl raping her—even though there was no real evidence for that. It was all hearsay, through Klemper. Which reminds me, I have to let her know about Mick the Dick’s demise. I guarantee she’ll do a happy dance.”
It took Gurney a few seconds to get that image out of his mind. “Okay, Jack, we need to get to the job at hand. Panikos is here. With us. Within reach. Let’s go find him.” As he ended the call, a final deafening display of fireworks lit up the sky. It made him think, for the twelfth time in the past two days, of the case of the exploding car. That made him think of the events in the alley shooting described by Esti. Which made him wonder yet again what revealing element they might have in common with the Spalter case. As important as that question seemed, however, he couldn’t let it divert his attention now.
He resumed his progress through the fairgrounds, fixating on the face of every short, thin person he came upon. Better to study too many than too few. If someone of the right size happened to be looking away, or if their features were obscured by glasses, a beard, the brim of a hat, he followed them discreetly, angling for a better view.
With a rising sense of possibility, he followed one tiny, ageless, genderless creature in loose black jeans and a baggy sweater until a wiry, sunburned man in a John Deere hat greeted her warmly in a tent sponsored by the Evangelical Church of the Risen Christ, called her Eleanor, and asked about the condition of her cows.
Two more such “possibilities”—discovered in the next two concourses and collapsing in similar absurdities—were draining the hope out of his search, while the nasal country lyrics blaring from the giant four-sided screen at the fair’s central intersection were saturating the atmosphere with a disorienting sentimentality. There was a similarly disorienting combination of odors, dominated by popcorn, French fries, and manure.
As Gurney rounded the corner where a room-sized refrigeration unit with a glass front was displaying a huge bovine butter sculpture, he caught sight of the same roving band of a dozen or so face-painted kids he’d seen before. He picked up his pace to get closer.
Apparently they’d been successful in their flowers-for-donations pitches. Only two members of the group were still carrying bouquets, and they seemed in no hurry to give them away. As he was watching them, he spotted the cop from the exhibitors’ gate coming along the concourse from the opposite direction with what looked like two plainclothes colleagues.
Gurney ducked through a doorway and found himself in the 4-H Club exhibit hall, surrounded by displays of large, shiny vegetables.
As soon as the search party had passed, he stepped back outside. He was closing in again on the face-painted kids when he was startled by another explosion, not far away. It was a powerful whump—incendiary style—with maybe twice the force of the one that had destroyed the flower stand. But it had little immediate effect on the meandering mass of fairgoers, probably because the fireworks had been louder.
