by John Verdon
Gurney made this speech in a relaxed, confident, almost amused voice. He knew he was treading a perilous line between provoking rage and planting a seed of uncertainty. But perilous lines were part of the game.
Landon’s expression betrayed nothing.
Gurney extemporized. “Speaking of con jobs—you might want to look at some photos I have.”
Madeleine’s advice came to mind. Just open the door a crack.
“Where are these photos?”
“On a USB drive.”
“Where?”
“In my pocket.”
Gurney pointed to his right jacket pocket, which, in his seated position on the floor, was just above the edge of the coffee table.
Landon gave him a long appraising look.
“Shall I toss it to you?” asked Gurney. “Or do you want to come and get it yourself?”
Landon hesitated. Then he took a step closer and aimed his pistol at Gurney’s throat. “Slowly remove the drive from your pocket. Very slowly.”
Looking as anxious and defenseless as he could, Gurney reached slowly into his pocket.
In a single smooth movement he gripped the Beretta and, without removing it from his jacket, pointed it in the direction of Landon and began firing.
He wasn’t sure which round hit the man or where it hit him; but in the midst of the six-shot burst the man emitted a feral yowl and lurched backward into the corridor. By the time Gurney managed to heave the weighty coffee table off his legs, get to his feet, and stumble to the door with the Beretta in one hand and the Maglite in the other, the dark corridor was silent. He swept the light back and forth, but there was no sign of Landon.
He switched off the flashlight to avoid becoming an easy target and felt his way along the corridor to his own door. He unlocked and opened it.
Just inside, in the faint kerosene lamplight, he found Madeleine—wide-eyed, teeth clenched, with an iron poker drawn back like a baseball bat, ready to swing. She stared at him for a good five seconds before taking a breath and relaxing enough to lower the poker.
After telling her as quickly as he could what had happened, he went back to Landon’s room and retrieved the man’s laptops, smartphones, and gun cabinet.
Then he reloaded the Beretta’s magazine, barricaded their door, and rebuilt the fire.
The wind was howling fiercely now, the blizzard had finally arrived in full force, and there was nothing more they could do until daylight came.
CHAPTER 59
Sleep was impossible. There was too much to worry about, think about, plan for.
In a way, from an intellectual point of view, the case was over. The most perplexing questions had been answered, the major deceptions had been exposed. The puzzle had been solved. But a god-awful mess had been created along the way.
Bureaucratic and career imperatives were likely to make the mess bigger before it got smaller. The likelihood of obtaining any clarity or accountability from the forces associated with Norris Landon was in the neighborhood of zero. If those forces were indeed part of the CIA, zero would be an optimistic estimate. And BCI’s appetite would be minimal for any re-investigation that would make their first approach to the case appear fanciful at best.
From an emotional point of view, things were perhaps the least settled.
Through the whole restless night he and Madeleine huddled together on the couch in their ski clothes facing the fire. The groaning and creaking of the old building kept Gurney on edge, kept him speculating on the condition, whereabouts, and intentions of Landon.
The speculation was circular and endless. As were his thoughts about Colin Bantry’s place in Madeleine’s life, about her ability to recover from the shock of the things she’d seen, about the greed and ruthlessness of Austen Steckle, about the twisted history of the Galls, and about the delusional obsessions of those who hated America and those who claimed to love it.
A thought he’d had many times before came to him now with renewed power: God save us from our saviors.
From time to time he added a log to the fire. From time to time Madeleine sat up and stretched into one of her yoga positions.
Oddly, with so much to discuss, they spoke hardly at all.
At the first light of dawn they both began to doze.
Moments later they were awakened by a heavy mechanical rumbling.
Trying to place it, Gurney realized it was coming from outside the lodge. He slipped into his boots, removed the chair he’d jammed under the knob of the balcony door, and stepped out into the icy wind.
The sound was getting louder. The source, he discovered, was a big yellow truck that was just turning onto the lake road in the direction of the lodge. Mounted on the front of the truck was the largest industrial snow blower he’d ever seen—with an intake opening at least ten feet wide and five feet high. The massive rotating blades that pulled the ice and snow into that giant maw were rotating fast enough to create a blur. The secondary impeller blades must have been operating at an even greater speed judging from the energy with which the expelled material, converted to a powder, was rising from the disposal chute.
At a height of forty or fifty feet a strong crosswind was catching that geyser of finely pulverized ice and snow and blowing it far into the pine forest. When the roaring machine came abreast of the clearing in front of the lodge where the wind was strongest, the frozen output was carried hundreds of feet out over the lake.
As Gurney watched, the truck moved on past the lodge in the direction of the chalet and Gall House, effortlessly clearing four-foot-high ice-impacted drifts from the road surface.
Madeleine came out onto the balcony next to him. “Shouldn’t you stop him and give him a message for the police?”
“That road dead-ends at the Gall mansion. He has to come back the same way. I’ll stop him then.”
She looked toward the brightening eastern ridge. “Thank God the snow stopped. But it’s freezing out here. We should go back inside.”
“Right.”
They went in, shut the door tight, and stood at the window.
Madeleine produced a fragile smile. “It looks like the sky might actually be blue today.”
“Right.”
She gave him a curious look. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering why a county truck is clearing a private road.”
She stared at him. “Isn’t that something to be happy about?”
“You can be happy. I’ll do the worrying.”
“That seems to be your regular job.” She paused. “I think I’m ready to leave this place. What about you?”
“I’m ready. But once we get word to the police, we’ll need to make statements. About everything that’s happened here. That could take some time. Then we’ll be able to leave.”
She looked anxiously out at the road. “Maybe you should go downstairs now so you don’t miss him on his way by.”
“Lock the door after me.”
As a precaution against being caught off guard by Landon, he removed the Beretta from his pocket and held it in his hand, muzzle down.
He went downstairs and waited outside the main door, turning up his collar against the cutting wind. Within a couple of minutes the huge machine reappeared. To Gurney’s puzzlement, it turned off the road and in toward the lodge. With its snow blower shut down, it proceeded toward him, moved slowly under the portico, and stopped. The big diesel engine idled noisily for a few seconds before falling silent.
The operator stepped down out of the high cab, removing the wool hat and thick scarf that together had been covering most of his face.
“Jesus, it’s cold. How the fuck do people live here?”
“Jack?”
“No, your fairy godmother.”
Gurney pointed at the truck. “Where . . . how . . . did you . . .?”
“Borrowed it. Couldn’t get in here without it. Adirondacks, my ass. This is fucking Siberia.”
“You borrowed that thing?”
&nbs
p; “Kinda borrowed, kinda commandeered. You know, police emergency, et cetera.”
“But you’re not the police.”
“No time to split hairs. Is there any special reason you have that gun in your hand?”
“Long story. The short version is that Austen Steckle is dead, Barlow Tarr is dead, and I shot a CIA agent, who may or may not be dead.”
Gurney filled Hardwick in on Steckle’s plot to gain control of the Gall fortune—and the toxic interaction between his fatal-nightmare stratagem and the mind-control ambitions of Landon’s group at the CIA.
“So you figure at the end Landon was trying to save his career by wiping out the evidence of his mistake?”
“Something like that.”
“Including you and Madeleine?”
“Most likely.”
“Holy fuck. Hard to tell who was worse, Steckle or Landon.”
Gurney responded without hesitation. “Landon.”
“How so?”
“Steckle was a devil. Landon was a devil who thought he was an angel. The ones who think they’re angels are the worst of all.”
“You might have a point there.”
“So what’s this very interesting news you have for me?”
“Hardly seems to matter now, considering the fact that Steckle’s dead. But Esti looked a little deeper into Steckle’s earlier life as Alfonz Volk. Any idea what Volk means in Slovenian?”
Gurney smiled. The news was a little too late to be useful. But it was pleasant to have one’s suspicions confirmed. “Wolf?”
“Precisely. Now, can we please go inside before my balls turn into ice cubes?”
HAVING CHOSEN THE HEARTH ROOM—WITH ITS SINGLE DOORWAY, lack of windows, and open view of the reception area—as the best place for them to sit down and work out their next steps, Hardwick went about building a fire.
Gurney went upstairs to get Madeleine.
He found her standing at the basin, wearing jeans and a sweater, brushing her teeth. She stopped and gave him an odd little smile. “I’m just trying to feel normal.”
Her told her about Hardwick’s appropriation of the monster snow blower and about Esti Moreno’s discovery linking Steckle to Brightwater.
Neither event seemed to surprise her. “What do we do now?”
“We need to find Landon, check on the Hammonds, check on Peyton, check on the status of the generators, get word out to the county sheriff’s department and to BCI. There’s a hell of a lot more that’ll have to be taken care of after that, but not by us.”
She smiled and nodded. “You did it.”
“Did what?”
“You saved Richard.”
He knew it was pointless to repeat that saving Richard hadn’t been the goal. And there was also the small matter of not knowing for sure if the man was still alive.
“Right now we need to sit down with Jack, figure out who’s going to do what.”
They made their way along the dark corridor to the main staircase, illuminated now by the morning light coming up from the reception-area windows and glass-paneled doors. As they were descending the stairs, Gurney heard voices in the Hearth Room.
“Sounds like Richard and Jane,” said Madeleine with a relieved smile.
The Hammonds were plainly alive and well. Jane was engaged in an intense conversation with Hardwick while Richard stood a bit to the side, listening.
When Jane saw Gurney coming into the room with Madeleine, she stopped in mid-sentence and turned to him, her eyes widening with hope. “Is it true? Is it really all over?”
“As far as the case against Richard is concerned, I’d say that’s over. It’s clear that he was just the fifth victim of a complicated plot. There were no trances, no suicides. The deaths were all murders. The crime was complex, but the motives were simple—greed and control.”
For her benefit and Richard’s, he repeated the summary of the situation that he’d already given to Hardwick.
Jane’s mouth fell open. “My God! We didn’t know anything. Nothing at all. When the snow blower came by the chalet, and we could finally use the car, we thought we should come over to the lodge—to make sure you and Madeleine were all right, and to ask Austen about the generators. When we walked in, we found Jack and, well, here we all are.”
Richard stepped forward and extended his hand. “Thank you, David.” That was all he said, but he said it with such a palpable sincerity that nothing more seemed necessary.
Jane nodded enthusiastically. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” She came over to Gurney and hugged him, tears welling in her eyes. She went over to Hardwick and hugged him. “Thank you both. You’ve saved our lives.”
Hardwick looked eager to shift the conversation in a less emotional direction. “If you have any interest in pursuing a lawsuit against the state police or against Fenton personally—”
Richard cut him off. “No. To have it over and done with is good enough for me. From what you’re telling me, Fenton’s case has completely collapsed. Let that be the end of it.”
He’d hardly finished when the lodge door opened and Fenton himself walked into the reception area, followed by a uniformed trooper. The trooper took up a position at the door as Fenton strode over to the Hearth Room, stopping in the archway entrance.
His gaze moved from face to face, then came to rest on Hardwick’s. His mouth twisted into a smirk. “Well, well. I’d heard a nasty rumor that my old buddy Jack was trying to screw up an important case of mine. And then, just this morning, I get a call from the Highway Department about someone who claimed to be from BCI commandeering a major piece of highway equipment. I thought I ought to look into it myself. And look who I find in possession of that stolen equipment. Sorry to say, it appears to me that everyone in this room may be implicated.”
The smirk stretched into a sadistic grin. “This is a serious matter. I’m afraid I can’t let a past friendship get in the way of my present duty.”
Hardwick smiled. His voice was cordial. “You know, Gil, you never did have much of a brain. But right now you’re setting a new record for shitheadedness.”
Perhaps because of the disconnect between the tone and the words, it took a moment for the comment to register. When it did, Fenton started moving toward Hardwick, and the trooper by the outer door started moving toward the Hearth Room with his hand on his holstered Glock.
Seeing disaster seconds away, Gurney intervened the only way he was sure would work. He said, loud and clear, “Austen Steckle is dead. Norris Landon killed him.”
Fenton’s forward movement ceased.
The trooper came to a halt in the middle of the reception area.
Both looked as bewildered as if Gurney had announced the arrival of space aliens.
FOR THE NEXT TEN MINUTES FENTON LISTENED STONE-FACED—except for an occasional twitch at the corner of his eye—to a detailed narrative of Austen Steckle’s diabolical plot with its core illusion of induced suicides; the reverberations of that notion in a dark corner of the national security world; and Landon’s desperate cover-up attempt.
At length Fenton muttered a single-word question. “Steckle?”
Gurney nodded. “A very intelligent man. Maybe the only murderer in history clever enough to persuade his intended victims to publicly announce they were feeling suicidal.”
“And you shot Landon?”
“I had to. He was in the process of trying to kill everyone here, including me, who could reveal his misinterpretation of the suicides. In his world, gullibility is an unforgivable sin.”
Fenton nodded like a man suffering from a concussion. The silence ended a few seconds later with a commotion in the reception area—which he seemed hardly to notice.
A burly man in a leather jacket had burst in through the front door and was speaking to the trooper in a loud voice—demanding a police escort to the regional hospital in Plattsburgh.
Gurney’s first thought was that it might have something to do with Landon. But when the trooper questioned th
e man further, he explained that he had Peyton Gall “and a lady” in Gall’s Mercedes, and that Peyton and the lady might or might not be frozen to death, having “dozed off after a few drinks” in a hot tub that turned into a container of ice water during the blackout. That, in Gurney’s opinion, was just outlandish enough to be true.
When the trooper came to ask how Fenton wanted it handled, he stared at him uncomprehendingly and muttered, “Do whatever you want.”
The trooper went back and told the man—who Gurney now recognized as the unfriendly guard at Peyton’s gate—to get his frozen passengers to Plattsburgh as best he could. The man complained loudly, swore, and left.
Gurney suggested to the trooper that he call for reinforcements to begin the search for Landon, for a crime-scene team to deal with the body out by the generators and the one tied to a chair upstairs in the suite, for an electrician to restore power, and for another BCI senior investigator to provide whatever assistance might be needed under the circumstances. He made these suggestions clearly enough for everyone to hear them—so the trooper could interpret the lack of objection from Fenton as approval to proceed.
Explaining that his radio was more reliable on the ridge than in the lodge, the trooper headed out on his communications mission. Fenton followed him from the lodge to the cruiser, but didn’t get in. When the cruiser departed, Fenton remained under the portico, gazing after it.
“He’s completely fucked,” said Hardwick.
“Yes.”
Hardwick coughed into a filthy handkerchief. “I better return the borrowed snow blower to the Highway Department yard and put that bullshit stolen-equipment issue to rest.”
“Good idea.”
“I left Esti’s truck there when I took the snow blower, so I’ll get that and come back.”
“When you’re out there passing through live cell country, get the word to our contacts in Palm Beach, Teaneck, and New Jersey. Tell Esti. Tell Robin Wigg. Tell anyone you feel like telling. I want to be sure there’s no way anyone can roll this up and make it disappear.”
