by John Verdon
It occurred to Gurney that agreeing with Val Perry on the terms of their arrangement took priority over extending his list of things to do. He put down his pen and picked up his cell phone. He was routed directly into her voice mail. He left his number and a brief message referring to “possible next steps.”
She called back less than two minutes later. There was a childish elation in her voice, plus the kind of intimacy that sometimes results from the lifting of a great burden. “Dave! It was so good to hear your voice just now! I was afraid you wouldn’t want anything to do with me after the way I behaved yesterday. I’m sorry about that. I hope I didn’t scare you off. I didn’t, did I?”
“Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to get back to you and let you know what I’d be willing to do.”
“I see.” Apprehension had taken her elation down a notch.
“I’m still not sure how helpful I can be.”
“I’m positive you could be very helpful.”
“I appreciate your confidence, but the fact is—”
“Excuse me a second,” she broke in, then spoke away from the phone. “Could you wait just a minute? I’m on the phone … What? … Oh, shit! All right. I’ll look at it. Where is it? Show it to me … That’s it? … Fine! … Yes, it’s fine. Yes!” Then, back on the phone, to Gurney, “God! You hire someone to do something and it turns into a full-time job for you, too. Don’t people realize that you’re hiring them in order to have them do the job?” She let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be wasting your time with this. I just had the kitchen redone, with special tiles that were custom-made in Provence, and there doesn’t seem to be any end to the problems between the installer and the interior designer, but this is not what you’re calling about. I’m sorry, I really am. Wait. I’m closing the door. Maybe they can understand a closed door. Okay, you were starting to say what you’d be willing to do. Please go on.”
“Two weeks,” he said. “I’ll work on it for two weeks. I’ll look into the case, do what I can, make whatever progress I can in that period of time.”
“Why only two weeks?” Her voice was strained, as though she were consciously trying to practice the alien virtue of patience.
Why indeed? Until she asked this obvious question, he had not recognized the difficulty of articulating a sensible answer. The real answer, of course, involved his desire to mitigate Madeleine’s reaction to his involvement in the case, not the nature of the case itself.
“Because … in two weeks I’ll either have made significant progress or … I’ll have demonstrated that I’m not the right guy for the job.”
“I see.”
“I’ll maintain a daily log and bill you weekly at the rate of a hundred dollars an hour, plus out-of-pocket expenses.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll clear any major expenses with you beforehand: air travel, anything that—”
She interrupted. “What do you need to start? A retainer? You want me to sign something?”
“I’ll draft an agreement and e-mail it. Just print it out, sign it, scan it, and e-mail it back. I don’t have a PI license, so officially you’ll be retaining me not as a detective but as a consultant to review the evidence and evaluate the status of the investigation. No need for money up front. I’ll send you an invoice a week from today.”
“Fine. What else?”
“A question—out of left field, maybe, but it’s been on my mind since I watched the video.”
“What?” There was a touch of alarm in her voice.
“Why weren’t there any friends of Jillian’s at the wedding?”
She emitted a sharp little laugh. “Jillian had no friends at the wedding because Jillian had no friends.”
“None at all?”
“I described my daughter to you yesterday. Are you shocked that she would have no friends? Let me make something perfectly clear. My daughter, Jillian Perry, was a sociopath. A sociopath.” She repeated the term as though she were teaching it to an ESL student. “The concept of friendship did not fit in her brain.”
Gurney hesitated before going on. “Mrs. Perry, I’m having trouble—”
“Val.”
“All right. Val, I’m having trouble putting a couple of things together here. I’m wondering—”
She cut him off again. “You’re wondering why the hell I’m so determined to … to bring to justice … the killer of a daughter I obviously couldn’t stand?”
“Close enough.”
“Two answers. That’s the way I am. And it’s none of your fucking business!” She paused. “And maybe there’s a third answer. I was a lousy mother, really lousy, when Jilli was a kid. And now … Shit … never mind. Let’s go back to it being none of your fucking business.”
Chapter 17
In the shadow of the bitch
In the past four months, he’d hardly thought of the other one at all—the one just before the Perry bitch, the one of little importance by comparison, the overshadowed one, the one no one had discovered yet, the one whose fame was yet to come—the one whose elimination was, in part, a matter of convenience. Some might say entirely a matter of convenience, but they would be wrong. Her end was well deserved, for all the reasons that damned her kind:
the stain of Eve,
rotten heart,
rutting heart,
heart of a slut,
a slut at heart,
sweat on the upper lip,
grunts of a pig,
horrid gasps,
lips parting,
lascivious lips, devouring lips,
wet tongue,
slithering serpent,
enveloping legs,
slippery skin,
vile fluids,
slime of a snail.
Wiped clean by death,
evaporated by death,
damp limbs dried by death,
purification by desiccation,
dry as dust.
Harmless as a mummy.
Vaya con Dios!
He smiled. He must remember to think of her more often—to keep her death alive.
Chapter 18
Ashton’s neighbors
By 10:00 A.M., Gurney had e-mailed Val Perry a memo of agreement and called three numbers she’d given him for Scott Ashton—his home number, personal cell number, and the Mapleshade Residential Academy number—in an effort to arrange a meeting. He’d left voice-mail messages at the first two and a live message at the third, with an assistant who identified herself only as Ms. Liston.
At 10:30 Ashton called him back, said he’d gotten all three messages, plus one from Val Perry explaining Gurney’s role. “She said you’d want to speak to me.”
Ashton’s voice was familiar from the video, but richer and softer on the phone, impersonally warm, like an advertising voice for an expensive product—quite suitable for a top-shelf psychiatrist, thought Gurney.
“That’s right, sir,” he said. “As soon as it’s convenient for you.”
“Today?”
“Today would be ideal.”
“The academy at noon or my home at two. Your choice.”
Gurney chose the latter. If he started out for Tambury immediately, he’d have time to drive around, get a sense of the area, Ashton’s road in particular, maybe talk to a neighbor or two. He went to the table, got the BCI interview list that Hardwick had provided, and made a pencil dot next to each name with a Badger Lane address. From the same pile, he chose the folder marked “Interview Summaries” and headed for his car.
* * *
The village of Tambury owed its sleepy, secluded quality in part to having grown up around an intersection of two nineteenth-century roads that had been bypassed by newer routes, a circumstance that usually produces an economic decline. However, Tambury’s location in a high open valley on the northern edge of the mountains with postcard views in every direction saved it. The combination of out-of-the-way peace and great beauty made it an attractive location for wealthy retirees and sec
ond-home owners.
But not all the population fit that description. Calvin Harlen’s weed-choked shambles of a former dairy farm sat at the corner of Higgles Road and Badger Lane. It was just past noon when the crisp librarian’s voice of Gurney’s GPS delivered him to this final segment of his hour-and-a-quarter drive from Walnut Crossing. He pulled over onto the northbound shoulder of Higgles Road and eyed the dilapidated property, whose most striking feature was a ten-foot-high mountain of manure, overgrown with monstrous weeds, next to a barn that was leaning precipitously toward it. On the far side of the barn, sinking into a field of waist-high scrub, a haphazard line of rusting cars was punctuated by a yellow school-bus carcass with no wheels.
Gurney opened his folder of interview summaries and pulled the appropriate one to the top. He read:
Calvin Harlen. Age 39. Divorced. Self-employed, odd jobs (home repair, lawn mowing, snowplowing, seasonal deer cutting, taxidermy). General maintenance work for Scott Ashton until arrival of Hector Flores, who took over his jobs. Claims he had “unwritten contract” with Ashton that Ashton broke. Claims (without supporting facts) that Flores was illegal alien, gay, HIV-positive, crack addict. Referred to Flores as a “filthy spic,” Ashton as a “lying piece of shit,” Jillian Perry as a “snotty little cunt,” and Kiki Muller as a “spic-fucking whore.” No knowledge of the homicide, related events, location of the suspect. Claims he was working alone in his barn the afternoon of the homicide.
Subject has low credibility. Unstable. Record of multiple arrests over 20-year period, for bad checks, domestic violence, drunk and disorderly, harassment, menacing, assault. (See Unified Criminal Record form attached.)
Gurney closed the folder, put it on the passenger seat. Apparently Calvin Harlen’s life had been a prolonged audition for White-Trash Poster Boy.
He got out of the car, locked it, and walked across the trafficless road to a rutted expanse of dirt that served as a kind of driveway onto the property. It forked into two loosely defined directions, separated by a triangle of stunted grass: one toward the manure pile and barn on the right, the other on the left toward a ramshackle two-story farmhouse whose last paint job was so many decades in the past that the patches of paint on the rotting wood no longer had a definable color. The porch overhang was supported by a few four-by-four posts of more recent vintage than the house but far from new. On one of the posts was a plywood sign advertising DEER CUTING in red, dripping, hand-painted letters.
From inside the house came an eruption of the frantic barking of at least two large-sounding dogs. Gurney waited to see if the commotion would bring someone to the door.
It brought someone out of the barn, or at least out from someplace behind the manure pile—a thin, weathered man with a shaved head, holding what appeared to be either a very fine screwdriver or an ice pick.
“You lose something?” He was smirking as though the question were a clever joke.
“You asking me if I lost something?” said Gurney.
“You say you’re lost?”
Whatever the game was, the thin man seemed to be enjoying it.
Gurney wanted to knock him off balance, make him wonder what the game was.
“I know some people with dogs,” said Gurney. “Right kind of dog, you can make a lot of money. Wrong kind, you’re out of luck.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
It took Gurney a second or two—and the sudden end of the barking in the house—to realize whom the thin man had shouted at.
The situation had the potential for becoming unsafe. Gurney knew he still had the option of walking away, but he wanted to stay, had a lunatic urge to spar with the lunatic. He began studying the ground around him. After a while he picked up a small oval stone about the size of a robin’s egg. He massaged it slowly between his palms as if to warm it, flipped it in the air like a coin, caught and enclosed it in his right fist.
“Fuck are you doing?” the man asked, taking a short step closer.
“Shhh,” said Gurney softly. Finger by finger, he slowly opened his fist, examined the stone closely, grinned, and tossed it over his shoulder.
“What the fuck …?”
“Sorry, Calvin, didn’t mean to ignore you. But that’s the way I make my decisions, and it takes a lot of concentration.”
The man’s eyes widened. “How’d you know my name?”
“Everybody knows you, Calvin. Or do you prefer being called Mr. Hard-On?”
“What?”
“Calvin, then. Simpler. Nicer.”
“The fuck are you? What do you want?”
“I want to know where I can find Hector Flores.”
“Hec … What?”
“I’m looking for him, Calvin. I’m going to find him. Thought maybe you could help me.”
“How the hell …? Who …? You ain’t no cop, right?”
Gurney said nothing, just let his expression fade into his best imitation of a dead-eyed killer. The ice-man look seemed to rivet Harlen, widen his eyes a little more.
“Flores the spic, that’s who you’re after?”
“Can you help me, Calvin?”
“I don’t know. How?”
“Maybe you just could tell me everything you know—about our mutual friend.” Gurney inflected the last three words with such ironic menace that he was afraid for a second he’d overdone it. But Harlen’s inane grin removed the fear that anything with this guy could be overdone.
“Yeah, sure, why not? Like what do you want to know?”
“To start with, do you know where he came from?”
“Bus stop in the village where these spic workers come, hang around. They loiter,” he said, making it sound like a legal term for masturbating in public.
“How about before that? You know where he came from originally?”
“Some Mexican dump, wherever the fuck they all come from.”
“He never told you?”
Harlen shook his head.
“Did he ever tell you anything?”
“Like what?”
“Anything at all. Did you ever actually speak to him?”
“Once. On the phone. Which is another reason I know he’s full of shit. Last—I don’t know—October, November? I called Dr. Ashton about the snowplowing, but the spic answered the phone, wanted to know what I wanted. Told him I wanted to talk to the doctor, why the fuck should I talk to him? Tells me I got to tell him what it’s about and he’ll tell the doctor. I tell him I didn’t call to talk to him—go fuck himself! Who the fuck’s he think he is? These fucking Mexican scumbags, they come up here, bring their fucking swine-flu AIDS leprosy shit, go on fucking welfare, steal fucking jobs, don’t pay taxes, nothing, fucking stupid diseased bastards. I ever see the slimy little fuck again, I’ll shoot him in the fucking head. First I’ll shoot his fucking balls off.”
In the middle of Harlen’s rant, one of the dogs in the house started barking again. Harlen turned to the side, spit on the ground, shook his head, shouted, “Shut the fuck up!” The barking stopped.
“You said that was another reason you knew he was full of shit?”
“What?”
“You said that speaking to Flores on the phone was another reason you knew he was full of shit.”
“Right.”
“Full of shit how?”
“Fuckhead came here, couldn’t speak a fucking word of English. Year later he’s talking like a fucking—I don’t know, a fucking … like he knows everything.”
“Right, so you figure … what, Calvin?”
“I figure maybe it was all bullshit, you know what I mean?”
“Tell me.”
“Nobody learns English that fucking fast.”
“You’re thinking he wasn’t really a Mexican?”
“I’m saying he was full of shit, pulling some kind of deal.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s obvious, man. He’s that fucking smart, why the fuck did he show up at the doctor’s house asking if he could rake leav
es? He had a fucking agenda, man.”
“Interesting, Calvin. You’re a bright guy. I like the way you think.”
Harlen nodded, then spit on the ground again as if to emphasize his agreement with the compliment. “And there’s another thing.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Guilty spic would never let you see his face. Always had one of them rodeo hats on, brim pulled down in front, sunglasses. You know what I think? I think he was afraid to be seen, always hiding in the big house or in that fucking dollhouse. Just like the cunt.”
“Which cunt would that be?”
“The cunt that got whacked. Drive past you on the road, she’d look away like you was some kind of dirt. Like you was roadkill, fucking stupid cunt. So I’m thinking maybe they had something on the side, right, her and Mr. Fucking Greaseball? Both too fucking guilty to look anybody in the eye. Then I’m thinking, hey, wait a minute, maybe it’s more than that. Maybe the spic is afraid of being identified. You ever think of that?”
When Gurney finally concluded the interview, thanking Harlen and telling him he’d be in touch, he wasn’t sure how much he’d learned or what it might be worth. If Ashton had started using Flores instead of Harlen for jobs around the property, Harlen would no doubt have a huge resentment, and all the rest, all the bile that Harlen had been spewing, might have arisen directly from the blow to his wallet and his pride. Or maybe there was more to it. Maybe, as Hardwick had claimed, the whole situation had hidden layers, wasn’t what it seemed to be at all.
Gurney returned to his car on the shoulder of Higgles Road and wrote three short notes to himself in a little spiral pad.
Flores not who he said he was? Not Mexican?
Flores afraid of Harlen recognizing him from past? Or afraid of Harlen being able to ID him in the future? Why, if Ashton could ID him?
Any evidence of an affair between Flores and Jillian? Any prior connection between them? Any pre-Tambury motive for the murder?
He looked skeptically at his own questions, doubtful that any of them would lead to a useful discovery. Calvin Harlen, angry and seemingly paranoid, was hardly a reliable source.