by John Verdon
Chapter 27
Getting to know the DA
The County Office Building, which had carried that bland designation since 1935, had formerly been called the Bumblebee Lunatic Asylum—founded in 1899 through the generosity (and temporary insanity, his disowned heirs argued to no avail) of the eponymous British transplant, Sir George Bumblebee. The murky redbrick edifice, infused with a century of soot, loomed darkly over the town square. It was about a mile from state police headquarters and the same hour-and-a-quarter drive from Walnut Crossing.
The inside was even less appealing than the outside, for the opposite reason. In the 1960s it had been gutted and modernized. Begrimed chandeliers and oak wainscoting were replaced by glaring fluorescent fixtures and white drywall. The thought crossed Gurney’s mind that the harsh modern light might serve to keep at bay the mad ghosts of its former residents—an odd thing for a man to be thinking on his way to negotiate the details of an employment contract, so he focused instead on what Madeleine had said that morning on his way out: “He needs you more than you need him.” He pondered that as he waited to pass through the elaborate lobby security apparatus. Once past that barrier, he followed a series of arrows to a door whose frosted-glass panel bore the words DISTRICT ATTORNEY in elegant black lettering.
Inside, a woman at a reception desk met his eyes as he entered. It was Gurney’s observation that a man’s choice of a female assistant is based on competence, sex, or prestige. The woman at the desk seemed to offer all three. Despite a possible age of fifty or so, her hair, skin, makeup, clothes, and figure were so well tended they suggested a focus on things physical that was almost electric. The assessing look in her eyes was cool as well as sensual. A little brass rectangle propped up on her desk announced that her name was Ellen Rackoff.
Before either of them spoke, a door to the right of her desk opened and Sheridan Kline stepped into the reception room. He grinned with an approximation of warmth.
“Nine o’clock on the dot! I’m not surprised. You strike me as a person who does exactly what he says he’s going to do.”
“It’s easier than the alternative.”
“What? Oh, yes, yes, of course.” Bigger grin, but less warmth. “Do you prefer coffee or tea?”
“Coffee.”
“Me, too. Never understood tea. You a dog man or a cat man?”
“Dog, I guess.”
“Ever notice that dog people prefer coffee? Tea is for cat people?”
Gurney didn’t think that was worth thinking about. Kline gestured for him to follow him into his office, then extended the gesture in the direction of a contemporary leather sofa, settling himself into a matching armchair on the other side of a low glass table and replacing his grin with a look of almost comical earnestness.
“Dave, let me say how happy I am that you’re willing to help us.”
“Assuming there’s an appropriate role for me.”
Kline blinked.
“Turf is a touchy issue,” said Gurney.
“Couldn’t agree more. Let me be frank—speak with an open kimono, as the saying goes.”
Gurney hid a grimace under a polite smile.
“People I know at the NYPD tell me impressive things about you. You were the lead investigator on some very big cases, the key man, the man who put it all together, but when the time came for congratulations, you always gave the credit to someone else. Word is, you had the biggest talent and smallest ego in the department.”
Gurney smiled, not at the compliment, which he knew was calculated, but at Kline’s expression, which seemed truly baffled by the notion of reluctance to take credit.
“I like the work. I don’t like being the center of attention.”
Kline looked for a long moment as if he were trying to identify an elusive flavor in his food, then gave it up.
He leaned forward. “Tell me how you think you can have an impact on this case.”
This was the critical question. Anticipating how it might be answered had occupied much of Gurney’s drive from Walnut Crossing.
“As a consulting analyst.”
“What does that mean?”
“The investigation team at BCI is responsible for gathering, inspecting, and preserving evidence, interviewing witnesses, following up leads, checking alibis, and formulating a working hypothesis regarding the identity, movements, and motives of the killer. That last piece is crucial, and it’s the one I believe I can help with.”
“How?”
“Looking at the facts in a complex situation and developing a reasonable narrative is the only part of my job I was any good at.”
“I doubt that.”
“Other people are better at questioning suspects, discovering evidence at the scene—”
“Like bullets no one else knew where to look for?”
“That was a lucky guess. There’s usually someone better than I am at each little piece of an investigation. But when it comes to fitting the pieces together, seeing what matters and what doesn’t, I can do that. On the job I wasn’t always right, but I was right often enough to make a difference.”
“So you have an ego after all.”
“If you want to call it that. I know my limitations, and I know my strengths.”
He also knew from his years of interrogations how certain personalities would respond to certain attitudes, and he wasn’t wrong about Kline. The man’s gaze reflected a more comfortable understanding of that exotic flavor he’d been trying to label.
“We should discuss compensation,” said Kline. “What I have in mind is an hourly rate that we’ve established for certain consultant categories in the past. I can offer you seventy-five dollars an hour, plus expenses—expenses within reason—starting now.”
“That’s fine.”
Kline extended his politician’s hand. “I look forward to working with you. Ellen has put together a packet of forms, releases, affidavits, confidentiality agreements. It may take you some time if you want to read what you’re signing. She’ll give you an office you can use. There are details we’ll need to work out as we go along. I’ll personally bring you up to date on any new information I receive from BCI or from my own people, and I’ll include you in general briefings like the one yesterday. If you need to talk to investigative staff, arrange that through my office. To talk to witnesses, suspects, persons of interest—ditto, though my office. That okay with you?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t waste words. I don’t, either. Now that we’re working together, let me ask you something.” Kline sat back and steepled his fingers, lending his question added weight. “Why would you shoot someone first, then stab them fourteen times?”
“That large a number would normally suggest an act of rage or a cold-blooded effort to create an appearance of rage. The exact number may be meaningless.”
“But shooting him first …”
“It suggests that the purpose of the stabbing was something other than homicide.”
“I don’t follow you,” said Kline, cocking his head like a curious bird.
“Mellery was shot at very close range. The bullet severed the carotid artery. There was no sign in the snow that the gun was dropped or thrown to the ground. Therefore the killer must have taken the time to remove the material he’d wrapped around it to deaden the sound and then replace the gun in a pocket or holster before switching to the broken bottle and getting in position to stab the victim—now lying in the snow unconscious. The arterial wound would have been spurting blood dramatically at that point. So why bother with the stabbing? It wasn’t to kill the victim—who was, for all practical purposes, already dead. No, the perpetrator’s objective must have been either to obliterate the evidence of the gunshot—”
“Why?” asked Kline, moving forward in his chair.
“I don’t know why. It’s just a possibility. But it’s more likely, given the content of the notes preceding the attack and the trouble he took to bring the broken bottle, the stabbing has some
ritual significance.”
“Satanic?” Kline’s expression of conventional horror poorly concealed his appetite for the media potential of such a motive.
“I doubt it. As crazy as the notes seem, they don’t strike me as being crazy in that particular way. No, I mean ‘ritual’ in the sense that doing the murder in a specific way was important to him.”
“A revenge fantasy?”
“Could be,” said Gurney. “He wouldn’t be the first killer to have spent months or years imagining how he was going to get even with someone.”
Kline looked troubled. “If the key part of the attack was the stabbing, why bother with the gun?”
“Instant incapacity. He wanted it to be a sure thing, and a gun is a surer way than a broken bottle to incapacitate a victim. After all the planning that went into this business, he didn’t want anything to go wrong.”
Kline nodded, then jumped to another piece of the puzzle.
“Rodriguez insists the murderer is one of the guests.”
Gurney smiled. “Which one?”
“He’s not ready to say, but that’s where he’s putting his money. You don’t agree?”
“The idea is not completely crazy. The guests are housed on the institute grounds, which puts them all, if not at the scene, at least conveniently close to the scene. They’re definitely an odd lot—druggy, emotionally erratic, at least one with major-league criminal connections.”
“But?”
“There are practical problems.”
“Like what?”
“Footprints and alibis, to begin with. Everyone agrees the snow began around dusk and continued until after midnight. The murderer’s footprints entered the property from the public road after the snow had stopped completely.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“The prints are in the snow, but there’s no new snow in the prints. For one of the guests to have made those prints, he would have to have left the main house before the snow fell, since there are no prints in the snow leading away from the house.”
“In other words …”
“In other words, someone would have to have been missing from dusk to midnight. But no one was.”
“How do you know that?”
“Officially, I don’t. Let’s just say I heard a rumor from Jack Hardwick. According to the interview summaries, every individual was seen by at least six other individuals at various times in the evening. So unless everyone is lying, everyone was present.”
Kline looked reluctant to brush aside the possibility that everyone might be lying.
“Maybe someone in the house had help,” he said.
“You mean maybe someone in the house hired a hit man?”
“Something like that.”
“Then why be there at all?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“The only reason the current guests are under any suspicion at all is their physical proximity to the murder. If you were hiring an outsider to come in and do the murder, why put yourself in that proximity to begin with?”
“Excitement?”
“I guess that’s conceivable,” said Gurney with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.
“All right, let’s forget about the guests for the moment,” said Kline. “How about a mob hit set up by someone other than one of the guests?”
“Is that Rodriguez’s backup theory?”
“He thinks it’s a possibility. I gather from your expression that you don’t.”
“I don’t see the logic of it. I don’t think it would even come to mind if Patty Cakes didn’t happen to be one of the guests. First, there’s nothing currently known about Mark Mellery that could make him a mob target—”
“Wait a minute. Suppose the persuasive guru got one of his guests—someone like Patty Cakes—to confess something to him, you know, in the interest of inner harmony or spiritual peace or whatever bullshit Mellery was selling these people.”
“And?”
“And maybe later, when he’s home, the bad guy gets to thinking that he might have been a little rash with all that honesty and openness. Harmony with the universe might be a swell thing, but maybe not worth the risk of someone’s having information that could cause you serious problems. Maybe when he’s away from the charm of the guru, the bad guy reverts to thinking in more practical terms. Maybe he hires someone to eliminate the risk he’s concerned about.”
“Interesting hypothesis.”
“But?”
“But there isn’t a contract guy on earth who’d bother with the kind of mind games involved in this particular murder. Men who kill for money don’t hang their boots from tree limbs and leave poems on corpses.”
Kline looked like he might debate this but stopped when the door opened after a perfunctory knock. The sleek creature from the reception desk entered with a lacquered tray on which there were two china cups and saucers, an elegantly spouted pot, a delicate sugar bowl and creamer, and a Wedgwood plate bearing four biscotti. She set the tray on the coffee table.
“Rodriguez called,” she said, glancing at Kline, then added, as if answering a telepathic question, “He’s on his way, said he’d be here in a few minutes.”
Kline looked at Gurney as if he were trying to read his reaction. “Rod called me earlier,” he explained. “He seemed eager to express some opinions on the case. I suggested he drop by while you were here. I like everyone to know everything at the same time. The more we all know, the better. No secrets.”
“Good idea,” said Gurney, suspecting that Kline’s motivation for having them both there at the same time had nothing to do with openness and everything to do with a penchant for managing by conflict and confrontation.
Kline’s assistant left the room, but not before Gurney caught the knowing Mona Lisa smile on her face that confirmed his own view of the situation.
Kline poured both coffees. The china looked antique and expensive, yet he handled it with neither pride nor concern, reinforcing Gurney’s impression that the wunderkind DA had been to the manner born, and law enforcement was a step toward something more consistent with patrician birth. What was it Hardwick had whispered to him at yesterday’s meeting? Something about a desire to be governor? Maybe cynical old Hardwick was right again. Or maybe Gurney was reading too much into how a man held a cup.
“By the way,” said Kline, leaning back in his chair, “that bullet in the wall, the one they thought was a .357—it wasn’t. That was just a guess based on the size of the hole in the wall before they dug it out. Ballistics says it’s actually a .38 Special.”
“That’s odd.”
“Pretty common, actually. Standard sidearm in most police departments until the 1980s.”
“Common caliber, but an odd choice.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The killer went to some trouble to muffle the sound of the shot, make it as quiet as possible. If noise was a major concern, a .38 Special was an odd weapon to choose. A .22 pistol would have made a lot more sense.”
“Maybe it’s the only weapon he had.”
“Maybe.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“He’s a perfectionist. He’d make absolutely sure he had the right gun.”
Kline gave Gurney a cross-examiner’s stare. “You’re contradicting yourself. First you said that the evidence shows he wanted to keep the shot as quiet as possible. Then you said he picked the wrong gun to do that. Now you’re saying he’s not the kind of guy who’d pick the wrong gun.”
“Keeping the shot quiet was important. But maybe something else was more important.”
“Like what?”
“If there’s a ritual aspect to this affair, then the choice of gun could be part of that. The obsession with carrying out the murder in a certain way could take precedence over the sound problem. He’d do it the way he felt compelled to do it and deal with the noise as best he could.”
“When you say ritual, I hear psycho. Just how crazy do you think this gu
y is?”
“Crazy is not a term I find useful,” said Gurney. “Jeffrey Dahmer was judged legally sane, and he ate his victims. David Berkowitz was judged legally sane, and he killed people because a satanic dog told him to.”
“Is that what you think we’re dealing with here?”
“Not exactly. Our killer is vengeful and obsessed—obsessed to the point of emotional derangement, but probably not to the point of eating body parts or taking orders from a dog. He’s obviously very sick, but there’s nothing in the notes that reflect the DSM criteria for psychosis.”
There was a knock on the door.
Kline frowned thoughtfully, pursed his lips, seemed to be weighing Gurney’s assessment—or perhaps he was just trying to look like a man not easily distracted by a mere knock on the door.
“Come in,” he finally said in a loud voice.
The door opened, and Rodriguez entered. He couldn’t entirely conceal his displeasure at seeing Gurney.
“Rod!” boomed Kline. “Good of you to come over. Have a seat.”
Conspicuously avoiding the couch on which Gurney sat, he chose an armchair facing Kline.
The DA smiled heartily. Gurney guessed it was at the prospect of witnessing a clash of viewpoints.
“Rod wanted to drop by to share his current perspective on the case.” He sounded like a referee introducing one fighter to another.
“I look forward to hearing it,” said Gurney mildly.
Not mildly enough to keep Rodriguez from interpreting it as a provocation in disguise. He required no further urging to share his perspective.
“Everybody’s focused on the trees,” he said, loudly enough to be heard in a much larger room than Kline’s office. “We’re forgetting the forest!”
“The forest being …?” asked Kline.
“The forest being the huge issue of opportunity. Everybody’s getting tangled up in motive speculation and the crazy little details of the method. We’re being distracted from Issue Number One—a houseful of drug addicts and other criminal slimebags with easy access to the victim.”
Gurney wondered if this reaction was the result of the captain’s feeling his control of the case threatened or if there was more to it.