by John Verdon
“A threat, to be honest about it,” said Hammond softly. “An attempt to extort improved behavior. The message was simple: ‘Shape up, or end up with nothing.’ Ethan was determined to reform his brother any way he could.”
“The money was never truly intended for Richard,” added Jane. “In fact, once the will is probated and the bequest comes to him, he intends to refuse it.”
Gurney turned toward Hammond. “Twenty-nine million is a lot to refuse.”
Those unblinking blue-green eyes met his gaze. “I’ve had enough money in my life to understand what it is and what it isn’t. When you don’t have it, you tend to believe that having it will make a far greater difference than it actually does. It’s only by having it that you discover its limitations. My father made a great deal of money, and he never ceased to be a miserable man.”
Gurney leaned back in his leather chair and let his gaze settle on the fireless hearth. “Are there any other facts you’re keeping from me because they might give me the wrong idea?”
“No,” said Jane quickly. “There’s nothing else.”
“How about the phone calls to the victims?”
“You mean the calls supposedly made to them on the days they died?”
“Yes.”
Her lips tightened in anger. “That’s all Fenton.”
“What do you mean?”
“He claims to have found one of those prepaid phones in the drawer of Richard’s night table. But it’s a drawer Richard never used, and a phone he’d never seen before.”
“You’re suggesting that Fenton planted it?”
“He must have, mustn’t he?”
“It’s one possibility.”
“I don’t suppose he told you that Richard took a lie detector test—and passed?”
“No, he didn’t mention that.”
“Of course he didn’t! You see what he does? He only mentions things that look bad for Richard, and nothing that proves he’s innocent!”
Hammond looked like he’d been through all this before and was getting worn down by it. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask about?”
“He also brought up the subject matter of your doctoral thesis on voodoo.”
“Good Lord. What did he have to say about that?”
“He suggested it demonstrated your interest in using mind control to kill people.”
Jane threw her hands up in exasperation.
Gurney looked at Hammond. “Is it true your thesis related voodoo curses to hypnotism?”
“It was an objective analysis of the self-destructive mental states witch doctors create in their victims. I can give you a copy of the thesis, but I don’t see how it would help you.”
“Let’s leave the door open on that, in case it might be useful.”
“Fine. Anything else for now?”
“Just one last question. Was Ethan Gall gay?”
Hammond hesitated. “How is that relevant?”
“There seems to be a sexuality-related element buried somewhere in this case. I can’t say yet whether it’s relevant.”
“Ethan was too busy for the distractions of love. His energies were devoted entirely to the reformation of the world’s misbehaving souls.”
There was an edge in his tone that raised a question. Before Gurney had a chance to ask it, Hammond answered it.
“I admit I was interested in Ethan. But he wasn’t interested in me. Not in that way.”
There was a silence, broken by Jane. “Professionally, Ethan adored Richard. Absolutely adored him.”
“Professionally.” Hammond’s emphasis on the term pointedly underscored its boundaries.
PART TWO
THE BODY
CHAPTER 25
Gurney parked under the portico. His mind was shuttling back and forth between Hammond and Madeleine. The precise little man with a disconcerting interest in homicidal voodoo and eyes as bright and chilly as sapphires. Madeleine standing alone on a desolate dirt road gazing at the wreckage of a house where she’d spent Christmas vacations more than three decades ago.
He wanted to talk to Peyton Gall but suspected that getting any useful information from him would likely require more than a knock at his security gate. Figuring out the right approach was one more challenge Gurney added to his list as he entered the suite.
Half-imagining that Madeleine might still be in the tub, he was surprised to see her fully dressed, standing by the windows that looked out over the lake. He was equally surprised to see a fire blazing energetically in the hearth.
She turned toward him. “Steckle was here.”
“To start the fire?”
“And to ask what we wanted for lunch, and when we might be leaving for Vermont.”
“Did he say he wanted us to leave by any particular time?”
“No. But I got the impression he’d like it to be soon.”
“What did you tell him about lunch?”
“There were two choices. A cold salmon plate or a Cobb salad. I ordered one of each. You can have whichever you want. I’m not hungry.”
“He’s bringing it here to the room?”
As if in answer to his question, there was a knock at the door.
He went over and opened it.
Austen Steckle was standing there with a strained smile, holding a room-service tray with a silver dome. “Little late for lunch, folks, but better late than never, right?”
“Thank you.” Gurney reached for the tray.
“No, no, let me do it.” He stepped past Gurney without waiting for an answer, crossed the room, and set the tray down on the coffee table in front of the hearth. “Fire’s going good, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Too bad about the weather. Supposed to get a lot worse. Blizzard coming down from Canada.”
Madeleine gave him a worried look. “When?”
“Hard to say. That’s the thing about these mountains. They’ve got their beauty, their wild appeal, you know, but then there’s the downside, the unknown, you know what I’m saying?”
“I’m not sure we do,” said Gurney.
“When it comes to the weather at Wolf Lake, there’s always some doubt. I know you folks need to get on to other places. Obviously you wouldn’t want to get snowed in for a week.”
What was obvious to Gurney was that the man wanted to be rid of them, and the reason probably had nothing to do with the weather. “I have a feeling that Fenton would like me out of here. You have that feeling, too?”
The interesting thing to Gurney about Steckle’s reaction was that, for a couple of seconds, he had none. When he did speak, it was in an almost confessional tone. “I didn’t want to mention it, since I figured you’d be on your way today, tomorrow at the latest. But I guess I should tell you. Investigator Fenton said that extending the hospitality of the lodge to you at a time when it was closed to regular guests could create the wrong impression.”
“What wrong impression?”
“That the Gall family was supporting your efforts to undermine his investigation.”
“Interesting.”
“He said I should be careful about aiding a person who might be charged with obstruction of justice. He said getting too close to you might not be a good thing for the lodge.”
There was thud in the fireplace as one log rolled off another. Gurney walked over to the hearth, picked up a poker, and started rearranging the logs. He wanted to take a moment to consider the hand he’d just been dealt.
He turned back to Steckle. “Sounds like an uncomfortable spot for you to be in. But the truth is I have no interest at all in undermining his investigation. The more I learn, the more I suspect he’s on the right track.”
That prompted a curious glance from Madeleine and a frown from Steckle. “Pretty big turnaround. I understood Jane hired you to prove Fenton was wrong.”
“That’s not the way I work. I just follow the facts.”
“Wherever they lead?”
“Absolutely.”
<
br /> Steckle nodded slowly. “And you don’t think the facts favor the Hammonds?”
“Frankly, no. But getting back to the pressure you’re feeling from Fenton, are you saying I should leave the lodge and drop the case?”
Steckle raised his palms in objection. “Not at all. I’m just being honest with you about the pressure. I just want this shit to be over with.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Good.” He looked at Madeleine. “You understand what I’m saying, right?”
“Oh, yes. Perfectly. We all want this to be over with.”
“Good. Great.” He showed his teeth in something resembling a smile and pointed to the silver dome on the tray. “Enjoy your lunch.”
AFTER STECKLE LEFT, GURNEY LOCKED THE DOOR. MADELEINE stood by the fire, looking uneasy.
“Can we check on the weather?” she asked.
“Steckle may be exaggerating the problem to get rid of us.”
“Can we check on it anyway?”
“Sure.” He took out his phone, went to an Internet weather site, and typed in “Wolf Lake.”
When the forecast data appeared, he stared at it. “This is useless.”
“What does it say?”
“It says we may get terrible weather but probably won’t.”
“It doesn’t say that. Tell me what it actually—”
“It says there’s a 30 percent chance of a major ice storm this evening, with ice-pellet accumulation of two to three inches, resulting in hazardous driving conditions.”
“And tomorrow?”
“A 30 percent chance of heavy snow accumulation, up to eighteen inches. Possible four-foot drifts with winds gusting to forty miles per hour.”
“So after this afternoon driving will be impossible?”
“It’s only 30 percent likely, meaning it’s 70 percent unlikely.”
She turned back to the window. As she stood gazing out toward Devil’s Fang, he could hear her fingernail attacking her cuticle.
He sighed. “If you want, we can leave for Vermont right now.”
She didn’t answer.
“I mean, if you’re worried about bad weather getting in the way—”
She cut him off. “Just . . . wait. I’m trying to make the right decision.”
The right decision? About what?
He picked up the poker and set about the rearrangement of the logs. After a while he gave that up and sat down on the couch. Minutes passed before she spoke again—this time so softly he almost couldn’t make out the words.
“Will you come with me?”
“Where?”
“I’d like to go back to where I was this morning . . . but have you with me . . . if you’d be willing to come.”
He sensed that the important thing was to say yes, which he did, and to put aside the questions that came immediately to mind.
THEY SET OUT IN A FOG THAT THINNED AS THEY DROVE UP TOWARD the ridge that defined the edge of the geological declivity that contained Wolf Lake. Beyond the ridge there was no fog at all, but slippery spots on the road made for slow going.
As they emerged from the Gall Wilderness Preserve, the GPS directed them onto a public road that led even higher into the surrounding mountains.
Twenty-five minutes later, the GPS alerted them to an upcoming turn onto Blackthorn Road. That intersection formed the center of a ghost town consisting of a few unidentifiable wooden structures in various stages of dilapidation.
“We’re almost there,” said Madeleine, sitting up straighter.
A minute later the GPS told them to make a right on Hemlock Lane.
“Don’t make the right,” said Madeleine. “It’s rutted and overgrown. Pull over here.”
He did as she said. They stepped out of the car into a cutting wind. He turned up the collar of his jacket and pulled his woolen ski cap down over his ears. Whatever it had once been, Hemlock Lane now appeared to be nothing but a rough dirt path into the woods.
She took his cold hand in hers and led him into the desolate lane.
They proceeded cautiously on the icy surface with the wind in their faces, climbing over fallen trees. The first structure they came upon was an abandoned cottage, covered with blotches of black mildew. Half hidden in the woods behind it were two smaller ones in total disrepair.
Madeleine stopped. “The Carey twins, Michael and Joseph, lived here with their mother. In the summer she rented out those little cottages in the back, but in the winter it was just them.”
As her gaze moved over the scene, Gurney got the impression she was attempting to see it as it once was.
“Come,” she said after a while, leading him along the lane.
Brittle remnants of the summer brambles were leaning in from both sides, catching at their pants and jacket sleeves. A few hundred yards farther they came to a second property in worse shape than the first. A huge fallen hemlock had obliterated at least a third of the main house. The remains of three small cabins off to the side were covered with years of decaying pine needles.
“This is it,” she said.
“This was the house where you spent your Christmases?”
She tightened her grip on his hand. “It was more than just Christmas week, though. The last year I came up I was here for six weeks.”
“Your holiday vacation was that long?”
“That year it was. My parents had put me in a private school that had longer winter breaks than public schools and shorter summer breaks.”
“What about your sister?”
“When I was fifteen Christine was already twenty-two.” She paused. “They used to call me the surprise baby. That was a euphemism for the shock baby. I’m sure they wished they could wake up one morning and discover I’d just been a bad dream.”
Taken aback by this, he said nothing. Rarely had she talked about her parents when they were alive, and never after they died.
She drew him closer to her as they proceeded along the narrowing path. Soon all resemblance to an actual road disappeared. The wind grew more biting. His face was beginning to ache. Just when he was about to question her destination, they emerged into a clearing. Beyond it was a perfectly flat white expanse, which he guessed was a frozen lake.
She led him across the clearing.
At the edge of the white expanse she stopped and spoke with a forced evenness. “This is Grayson Lake.”
“Is this the lake where that boy drowned?”
“His name was Colin Bantry.” She paused, seemed to reach a painful decision, and took a deep breath. “I was in love with him.”
In love . . . with the kid who drowned? “Jesus, Maddie. What . . . what happened?”
She pointed to two enormous hemlocks at the edge of the frozen lake. “One night I asked him to meet me . . . over there. It was so cold. The coldest night of the year.”
She fell silent, gazing at the trees.
“I told him I was pregnant.”
He waited for her to go on. All he could see, all he could focus on, was the look on her face, a look of desolation he’d never seen there before.
She repeated herself, slowly, as if punishing herself with the words. “I told him I was pregnant.”
Again he waited.
“He raced out onto the ice on his motorcycle. All the way out. In the moonlight. Out there.” She pointed with a trembling hand. “The ice broke.”
“That’s how he drowned?”
She nodded.
“What happened with . . . your pregnancy.”
“I wasn’t pregnant.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t lie. I really believed that I was. I’d missed my period. Maybe I wanted to be pregnant, wanted to be attached to Colin, wanted a new life, a life where someone wanted me more than my parents did. Oh God, I was so desperate! And I loved him so much!”
“Why do you think he did what he did?”
“The awful thing is, I have no idea. I have no idea, but the thought that tortured m
e was that he was running away, that he couldn’t face me, couldn’t face being with me anymore. He didn’t say a single word, just . . . just raced off across the ice.”
There was a long silence as they stood staring out over the lake.
Eventually Gurney asked, “Was there a police investigation?”
“Of course. Colin’s father was a deputy sheriff.”
“You told him what happened?”
“I didn’t say anything about telling Colin I was pregnant. I said that I didn’t know why he rode out onto the ice . . . that maybe he was just showing off, or just felt like doing it. He believed me. Colin was like that. Everyone knew Colin was wild.”
There was another silence. Her grip on his hand was almost painfully tight.
He looked into her eyes. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because we’re here.”
“You decided to reveal this secret you’ve been keeping from me all this time—because we’re here?”
“I didn’t see it as keeping a secret from you. I saw it as something I shouldn’t inflict on you.”
“Who did you tell? A friend? A therapist? You must have told someone.”
“A therapist, naturally. Around the time we met. When I was doing the training for my clinical certification. I thought therapy would be an ideal way of dealing with it, since in a sense it would allow me to keep it to myself.”
“Did it work?”
“I thought at the time that it did.”
“But . . .?”
“But now I think the process gave me the illusion of having dealt with what happened—and the conviction that I never needed to talk about it to anyone ever again. That’s what I meant when I said that I didn’t think of it as a secret. I just thought of it as a part of the past that belonged in the past, and talking about it in the present would have no purpose.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I don’t know. All I know is what I felt when Jack held up that Adirondack route map on his phone screen at our kitchen table, and I realized how close we’d be to Grayson Lake.”
“You felt some attraction to the place?”
“Oh God, no. The opposite. I felt sick. I almost had to leave the room.”