by John Verdon
Gurney soon found another equally peculiar omission. There was no mention of security videos. Surely someone had checked for their presence in and around the cemetery, as well as on Axton Avenue. It was hard to believe that such a routine procedure could have been overlooked, and even harder to believe that it had been conducted without any record of the outcome being entered in the file.
He slipped the case file under his front seat, got out of the car, and locked the doors. Looking up and down the block, he saw only three storefront businesses that appeared to actually be in business. The former RadioShack, which now seemed to have no name at all; River Kings Pizza; and something called Dizzy Daze, which had a show window full of inflated balloons but no other indication of what they might be selling.
The closest to him was the no-name electronics store. As Gurney approached it, he saw two hand-printed signs in the glass door: “Refurbed Tablet Computers from $199” and “Will Return 2PM.” Gurney glanced at his watch. It was 2:09. He tried the door. It was locked. He was starting toward River Kings, with the added goal of buying a Coke and a couple of slices, when a pristine yellow Corvette pulled up to the curb. The couple who emerged from it were less pristine. The man was in his late forties, thickly built, with more hair on his arms than on his head. The woman was a bit younger, with spiky blue and blond hair, a broad Slavic face, and huge breasts straining against the buttons of a half-open pink sweater. As she struggled revealingly out of the low-slung seat, the man went to the electronics store door, unlocked it, and looked back at Gurney. “You want something?” The guttural, heavily accented question was as much a challenge as an invitation.
“Yes. But it’s kind of complicated.”
The man shrugged and gestured to the woman, who’d finally freed herself from the grip of the car. “Talk to Sophia. Got something I need to do.” He went inside, leaving the door open behind him.
Sophia walked past Gurney into the store. “Always got something needs to do.” The voice was as Slavic as the cheekbones. “What I can be helping you?”
“How long have you had this store?”
“Long? He had it years, years, years. What you want?”
“You have security cameras?”
“Secure?”
“Cameras that photograph people in the store, on the street, coming in, leaving, maybe shoplifting.”
“Shoplifting?”
“Stealing from you.”
“Me?”
“Stealing from the store.”
“From the store. Yes. Fucking bastards try to steal the store.”
“So you have video cameras watching?”
“Video. Yes.”
“Were you here nine months ago when the famous Carl Spalter shooting happened?”
“Sure. Famous. Right here. Fucking bastard wife upstairs shoot him over there.” Sophia gestured broadly in the direction of Willow Rest. “Mother’s funeral. Own mother. You think of that?” She shook her head as if to say that a bad deed done at a mother’s funeral should earn the doer double the pain in hell.
“How long do you keep the security tapes or digital files?”
“Long?”
“How much time? For how many weeks or months? Do you retain any of what’s recorded, or is it all periodically erased?”
“Usually erase. Not fucking bastard wife.”
“You have copies of your security videos from the day Spalter was shot?”
“Cop took all, nothing left. Lot of money could have been. Big fucking bastard cop.”
“A cop took your security videos?”
“Sure.”
Sophia was standing behind a counter display of cell phones that formed a loose U shape around her. Behind the U was a half-open door that Gurney could see led to a messy office. He could hear a man’s voice on the phone but couldn’t make out the words.
“He never brought them back?”
“Never. On video man got bullet in the brain. You know what money TV gives for that?”
“Your video showed the man getting shot in the cemetery across the river?”
“Sure. Camera out front sees everything. Hi-def. Even background. Best quality. All function is automatic. Cost plenty.”
“The cop who took—”
The door behind her opened wider and the hairy man came out into the counter area.
His expression was deepening the lines of suspicion and resentment that shaped his features.
“Nobody took nothing,” he said. “Who are you?”
Gurney gave the man a flat stare. “Special investigator looking into the state police handling of the Spalter case. Did you have any direct contact with a detective by the name of Mick Klemper?”
The man’s expression remained steady. Too steady, too long. Then he shook his head slowly. “Got no memory of that.”
“Was Mick Klemper the ‘big fucking bastard cop’ that the lady here says took your security videos and never returned them?”
He gave her a look of exaggerated confusion. “What the fuck you talking about?”
She returned his look with an exaggerated shrug. “Cops didn’t take nothing?” She smiled innocently at Gurney. “So I guess they didn’t. Wrong again. Very often. Maybe had too much drink. Harry knows, remembers better than me. Right, Harry?”
Hairy Harry grinned at Gurney, his eyes like gleaming black marbles. “See? Like I said: Nobody took nothing. You go now. Unless you want to buy a TV. Big screen. Internet-ready. Good prices.”
Gurney grinned back. “I’ll think about that. What would a good price be?”
Harry turned his palms up. “Depends. Supply and demand. Life so much fucking auction, you know this what I mean? But good price anyways for you. Always good prices for policemans.”
Down the avenue, upon closer inspection, the store with the balloon display didn’t seem to be in business after all. The slanting sun had illuminated the window in a way that made it seem full of bright lights. And the coverage of the single security camera at the River Kings pizzeria was limited to a ten-foot square around the cash register. So unless the killer had been hungry, there wasn’t anything to be learned there.
But the electronics store situation had put Gurney’s brain into overdrive. If he had to pick a best guess, it would be that Klemper had discovered something inconvenient in the security video and decided to make it disappear. If so, there could have been a number of ways of keeping Harry’s mouth shut. Maybe Klemper knew the electronics store was a front for some other activity. Or maybe he knew things about Harry that Harry didn’t want other people to know.
Gurney reminded himself, however, that best guesses were still only guesses. He decided to move on to the next question. If the bullet couldn’t have come from that particular apartment, where might it have come from? He looked across the little river to Paulette’s blue umbrella, still open to mark the spot where Carl had fallen.
Examining the facades of the buildings along the avenue, he saw that the bullet might have been fired from virtually any one of forty or fifty windows facing in the direction of Willow Rest. Without a way of prioritizing them, they’d pose quite an investigative challenge. But what was the point? If gunpowder residue consistent with a .220 Swift cartridge had been found in the first apartment, then the .220 rifle had to have been fired there. Was he to believe that it had been fired at Carl Spalter from another apartment, then brought to the “impossible” apartment, fired again, and left there on its tripod? If so, the other apartment would have to be very close by.
The closest, of course, would be the one next door. The apartment occupied by the little man who called himself Bolo. Gurney entered the building lobby, took the stairs two at a time, went directly to Bolo’s door, and knocked softly.
There was a sound of feet moving quickly, something sliding—maybe a drawer opening, closing—a door being shut, then feet moving again just inside the door where Gurney stood. Instinctively he stepped to the side, standard procedure when there was reason to suspe
ct an unfriendly welcome. For the first time since arriving in Long Falls he questioned the wisdom of coming unarmed.
He reached over and knocked again, very gently. “Hey, Bolo, it’s me.”
He heard the sharp clicks of two deadbolts, and the door opened about three inches—only as far as its two chains permitted.
Bolo’s face appeared behind the opening. “Holy shit. You’re back. Guy who came to take a look at everything. Everything is one big lot of shit, man. What now?”
“Long story. Can I take a look out your window?”
“That’s funny.”
“Can I?”
“True? No shit? You want to look out my window?”
“It’s important.”
“I heard a lot of hot-shit lines, man, but that’s a good one.” He closed the door, undid the chains, opened it again, wider. He was wearing a yellow basketball jersey that came down to his knees and maybe nothing else. “ ‘Can I look out your window?’ I got to remember that one.” He stepped back to let Gurney in.
The apartment appeared to be the twin of the one next to it. Gurney looked into the kitchen, then down the short opposite hall where the bathroom was. The door was closed.
“You have visitors?” asked Gurney.
The gold teeth appeared once more. “One visitor. She don’t want nobody to see her.” He pointed to the windows on the far side of the main room. “You want to look out? Go look.”
Gurney was uncomfortable with the closed bathroom door, didn’t want that kind of an unknown behind him. “Maybe later.” He stepped back into the open doorway, positioning himself at an angle that allowed him to be equally aware of any movement in the apartment or on the landing.
Bolo nodded with an appreciative wink. “Sure. Got to be careful. No dark alley for you, man. Smart.”
“Tell me about Freddie.”
“Told you. He disappeared. You lie down with a fucker, you gonna get fucked. Bigger the fucker, worse you get fucked.”
“Freddie testified at Kay Spalter’s trial that she was in the apartment next to yours on the day her husband was shot. You knew he said that, right?”
“Everybody knew.”
“But you didn’t see Kay yourself?”
“Thought maybe I saw her, somebody like her.”
“What does that mean?”
“What I told the other cop.”
“I want to know it from you.”
“I saw a small … small person, looked pretty much like a woman. Small, thin. Like a dancer. There’s a word for that. Petite. You know that word? Some hot-shit word. You surprised I know that word?”
“You say ‘looked like a woman’? But you’re not sure it was a woman?”
“The first time, I thought it was. But hard to tell. Sunglasses. Big headband. Big scarf.”
“The first time? How many times—”
“Twice. I told the other cop.”
“She was here twice? When was the first time?”
“Sunday. The Sunday before the funeral.”
“You’re sure about the day?”
“Had to be Sunday. Was my only day off. From the fucking car wash. I am going out to Quik-Buy for cigarettes, going down the stairs. This petite person coming up the stairs, passes me, right? At the bottom of the stairs I think I don’t have my money. I come back up to get it. Now she’s standing there, outside the door, behind where you stand now. I go straight into my place for my money.”
“You didn’t ask her what she was doing here, who she was looking for?”
A sharp little laugh burst out of him. “Shit, man, no. Here you don’t better bother nobody. Everybody got their own business. Don’t like questions.”
“She went into that apartment? How? With a key?”
“Yeah. A key. Of course.”
“How do you know she had a key?”
“I heard it. Thin walls. Cheap. Key opening the door. Easy sound to know. Hey, that reminds me, definitely had to be Sunday. Ding-dong. Church down the river, twelve o’clock every Sunday. Ding-dong, ding-dong. Twelve fucking ding-dongs.”
“You saw this small person again?”
“Yeah. Not that day. Not until shooting day.”
“What did you see?”
“This time it’s Friday. Morning. Ten o’clock. Before I go to the car wash. I’m out, coming back with pizza.”
“At ten in the morning?”
“Yeah, good breakfast. I’m coming back, I see this little person go into this building. Same little person. Petite. Goes in very fast, with a box, or something bright, wrapped up. When I come in, little person is at top of the stairs, pretty sure now it’s a wrapped-up box, like for Christmas. Long box—three, four feet long. Christmas paper. When I get to the top of the stairs, the little person is already inside the apartment, but the door is still open.”
“And?”
“Little person is in the bathroom, I am thinking. That’s why this big rush, maybe why the outside door is still open.”
“And?”
“And it’s true, little person is in the bathroom taking a big leak. Then I know for sure.”
“Know what?”
“The sound.”
“What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t right.”
“What wasn’t right?”
“Men and women, the sound is different when they piss. You know this.”
“And what you heard was …?”
“Absolutely sound of pissing man. Little man, maybe. But absolutely man.”
Chapter 19
Crime and Punishment
After getting from Bolo his legal name (Estavio Bolocco), as well as his cell number and a more detailed description of the petite he-she-whatever creature, Gurney went back down to his car and spent another half hour searching the case file for any record of an Estavio Bolocco having been interviewed, for any note regarding the appearance in the apartment of a possible suspect on the Sunday prior to the shooting, or for any question being raised regarding the shooter’s gender.
He came up with zero on all three searches.
His eyelids were starting to feel heavy, and the burst of energy he’d felt earlier was just about expended. It had been a long day in Long Falls, and it was time to head for Walnut Crossing. As he was about to pull away from the curb, a black Ford Explorer pulled in just in front of him. Chunky Frank McGrath stepped out and walked back to Gurney’s car window.
“You all done here?”
“For today, anyway. I need to get home before I fall asleep. By the way, do you recall back around the time of the shooting a guy by the name of Freddie living here?”
“Squatting here, you mean?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s what I mean.”
“Fre-de-ri-co.” McGrath’s dragged-out Spanish accent reeked of contempt. “What about him?”
“Did you know he disappeared?”
“Maybe I did. Long time ago.”
“You ever hear anything about it?”
“Like what?”
“Like why he disappeared.”
“Why the hell would I care about that? They come and go. One less sack of shit for me to deal with. Nice if they all disappeared. Make that happen, I’ll owe you one.”
Gurney tore half a sheet of paper out of his notebook, wrote his cell number on it, and handed it to McGrath. “If you hear anything about Freddie, any rumor of where he might be, I’d appreciate a call. In the meantime, Frank, take it easy. Life is short.”
“Thank Christ for small favors!”
For most of his drive home, Gurney felt as though he’d opened a puzzle box and discovered that several large pieces were missing. The one thing he was sure of was that no round fired from the apartment in question could have struck Carl Spalter in the temple without first passing through the metal arm of that light pole. And that was inconceivable. No doubt the missing puzzle pieces would eventually resolve the apparent contradiction. If only he knew what sort of pieces he was looking for, and how many
.
The two-hour drive home to Walnut Crossing was mostly over secondary roads, through the rolling patchwork landscape of fields and woods that Gurney liked and Madeleine loved. But he noticed very little of it.
He was immersed in the world of the murder.
Immersed—until, at the end of the gravelly town road, he passed his pond and turned up his pasture lane. That’s when he was jarred into the present by the sight of four visiting cars—three Priuses and one Range Rover—parked in the grassy area alongside the house. It looked like a mini convention of the environmentally responsible and extravagantly countrified.
Oh, Jesus. The damn yoga club dinner!
He glanced at the time—6:49 p.m.—on the dashboard clock. Forty-nine minutes late. He shook his head, frustrated at his forgetfulness.
When he entered the big ground-floor space that served as kitchen, dining room, and sitting area, there was an energetic conversation in progress at the dining table. The six guests were familiar—they were people he’d been introduced to at local concerts and art shows—but he wasn’t sure of any of their names. (Madeleine had once pointed out, however, that he never forgot the names of murderers.)
Everyone looked up from the conversation and their food, most of them smiling or looking pleasantly curious.
“Sorry I’m late. I ran into a little difficulty.”
Madeleine smiled apologetically. “Dave runs into difficulty more often than most people stop for gas.”
“Actually, he arrived at exactly the right time!” The speaker was an ebullient, heavyset woman whom Gurney recognized as one of Madeleine’s fellow counselors at the crisis center. All he could remember about her name was that it was peculiar. She went on enthusiastically, “We were talking about crime and punishment. And in walks a man whose life is all about that very subject. What could be more timely?” She pointed to an empty chair at the table with the air of a hostess welcoming the guest of honor to her party. “Join us! Madeleine told us you were off on one of your adventures, but she was pretty stingy with the details. Might it have something to do with crime and/or punishment?”