Wolf Lake

by John Verdon

“Let me fill it for you, before you get stuck in the blizzard of the century for nothing.” Steckle joined Gurney and Madeleine in front of the fire. “See, here’s the problem with Peyton. It’s pretty simple. If Hammond wasn’t the brains behind the four deaths—murders, suicides, whatever you want to call them—then somebody else was. But the idea that it could be Peyton is just absurd.”

  “Why is that?”

  Steckle’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “Because Peyton Gall is a lunatic drug addict whose priorities are limited to coke, pussy, more coke, and more pussy.” He glanced at Madeleine. “Excuse my crude language, Mrs. Gurney, but I gotta call a spade a spade. We’re talking about a brain-damaged junkie whose social circle consists of the whores he brings in from wherever. Russia, Thailand, Vegas, crack houses in Newburgh—he’s gotten to the point where it don’t make any difference.”

  Gurney could see a sheen of sweat on Steckle’s shaved head. “As the last surviving member of the Gall family, this lunatic is your new boss?”

  “Hah! I have no illusions about my future here. I never had a contract. It was all based on mutual trust with Ethan and shared business goals. You know what it’s based on now? Nothing. Be amazed if I’m here in another three months at the rate that fucker is disintegrating.”

  “I was told he’d straightened out recently, at least for a while.”

  “True, but little periods of being straight have happened before, and they always end the same way—with him wilder and worse than ever.”

  “You’re telling me he’s not only too crazy to have masterminded a complicated crime, he’s barely able to function?”

  “You got it.”

  “Then my interview with him will be very brief.”

  Steckle’s frustration was palpable. “He won’t want to talk to you.”

  “I’m hoping you can help me there. Ethically, I can’t walk away until I sit down with him and form my own opinion of his capabilities. If what you say about him is true, it shouldn’t take long. Tell him I just need fifteen or twenty minutes of his time.”

  “What if he refuses?”

  “He might be persuaded to speak to me if he knows I’ll be hanging around until he does—that I’ll be keeping an eye on him, maybe taking a close look at his forms of amusement.”

  Steckle took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Fine. Have it your way. I’ll pass your request along to him.”

  “Be great if I could see him tomorrow—before ‘the big one’ snows us in.”

  “I’ll give it a try.” He flashed a mechanical smile and left the room.

  Madeleine was studying Gurney’s puzzled expression. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that running an Adirondack lodge is a strange job for a man who hates Adirondack weather.”

  BACK UPSTAIRS IN THE SUITE GURNEY FELT LIKE HE WAS STUCK IN an area where the signals of two radio stations overlapped. The competing signals were arising from his roles as detective and husband, and the static was growing louder. He couldn’t deny that he felt a certain natural attraction to the baffling aspects of the case. He also felt an acute need to be more supportive of Madeleine, especially now; but he wasn’t at all sure what action would best provide that support. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he was more comfortable dealing with murder than with marriage. In the grip of uncertainty, he decided to leave his further involvement in the case up to her.

  “If you want me to walk away from this Hammond business, I will. We could leave in the morning, meet up with Hardwick and Angela at Lake George as promised, then go on to Vermont.”

  “What about Peyton Gall?”

  “Hardwick can follow up on that—or not. That’s up to him. All I promised Jane was that I’d drop by Wolf Lake for a day or two and take a look. Well, I’ve taken a look.”

  “What have you seen?”

  “Nothing that isn’t contradicted by something else.”

  “For example?”

  “We have a suspect accused of a crime that may not even be possible to commit. We have an unsavory brother of the richest victim, with a huge financial motive for murder—who’s not even being considered as a suspect. We have a family legend involving a wolf nightmare that sounds like nonsense—except that a similar nightmare has been involved in four deaths in the past month. And we have a handyman who seems half crazy—except that he also seems to be the only one who believes there’s something evil going on at Wolf Lake.”

  “What about Jane?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The saintly little seeker of truth essentially lied to you by failing to mention Richard’s position in Ethan’s will, which may be the most important fact of all.”

  “Good point—and one more indication that there nothing’s simple about this case. Most of it is bizarre, if not impossible.”

  “So you’re hooked.” She produced a fleeting Mona Lisa smile. “Nothing appeals to you more than the bizarre and impossible. You might think you can walk away, but you can’t. And even if you could . . . I’d have to stay here myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to finish what I came here for.”

  Before he could respond to that, his phone rang.

  The ID on the screen said it was Holdenfield. He looked at Madeleine, and she gestured that he should take the call. He did.

  “Rebecca?”

  “Hi, David. I’m not sure I have anything of real value for you, but I wanted to get back to you sooner rather than later.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  Madeleine went into the bathroom and closed the door with a distinct firmness.

  “For what it’s worth,” said Rebecca, “I did a quick look-through of Hammond’s journal articles, as well as the media coverage he’s gotten from time to time. The general media items were mostly about the controversy over his gay emergence therapy. The antigay crowd may be shrinking these days, but what’s left of it is still as virulent as ever.”

  It brought to mind the hatred in Bowman Cox’s eyes. “Any other controversies?”

  “Some professional ones. Hammond isn’t shy about attacking the pharmaceutical companies for peddling psychotropic poisons. By contrast, he claims hypnotherapy is perfectly safe, and that his own techniques can achieve results that used to be considered impossible.”

  “Does he spell out those techniques?”

  “Ah, well, there’s the problem. His clinical success rate has been documented, and it’s astounding. With compulsive disorders, phobias, and PTSD symptoms, his rate of achieving total remission is five times higher than the American Psychiatric Association average.”

  “But . . .?”

  “But when other therapists try to employ the techniques he describes, they don’t come close to his results.”

  “Does that mean he’s faking his success stories?”

  “No, that’s been checked and double-checked. If anything, he’s been understating his positive outcomes—a breathtaking fact in itself.”

  “Then what’s the explanation?”

  “In my opinion, there’s a unique synergy between the method and the man.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Hammond has a uniquely powerful clinical presence.”

  “You mean he has a talent that enables him to do things other therapists can’t do?”

  “I’d say that his clinical talent appears to be out of the ballpark. I suspect that other people could learn his techniques, but only by closely observing what he does.”

  Gurney thought about this for a few moments. “It sounds like Dr. Hammond could put a very high price tag on himself, if he were so inclined.”

  “That’s an understatement.” Holdenfield paused. “The odd thing is, he doesn’t seem interested in money, or in any of the prestige positions in the field that could be his for the asking.”

  “One more question before you go. Does the term ‘trance-induced suicide’ mean anything to you? I heard it used recently, and I was
wondering if it had any clinical meaning.”

  “It’s ringing a distant bell. I’ll let you know if the context comes to mind. Anything else?”

  “Has Hammond ever commented on that new area of research you mentioned—separating thoughts from the emotions they generate?”

  “Matter of fact, he has. He suggested in a recent article that it could be achieved through hypnotherapy. He even seemed to be hinting that he might already have done it.”

  CHAPTER 27

  At 6:45 AM the next morning, at the first suggestion of dawn, they were in the Outback, heading for Lake George, heater turned up to the max. By the time they crested the first ridge, Madeleine had fallen asleep.

  The secondary roads to the Adirondack Northway were slippery from the night’s flurries, and the going was slow. The Northway itself, however, turned out to be free of both snow and traffic, and Gurney was able to make up for lost time.

  At 8:56 he entered Lake George Village and a moment later caught sight of the lake—as gray as the cold sky above it. As the road drew closer to the shore, he passed a deserted marina, a closed restaurant, and a lakefront hotel with a nearly empty parking lot.

  At 8:59, he pulled into the Sunoco station on Woodpecker Road. He spotted the red GTO parked by the convenience store in back of the gas pumps. Hardwick was pacing along the edge of the parking area smoking a cigarette. He looked grim. The hard set of his jaw, the evident tension in his muscular body, and those ice-blue sled-dog eyes would keep any sane stranger at a prudent distance.

  Madeleine stirred in her seat.

  “We’ve arrived,” said Gurney, pulling in next to the GTO. “Did you want to walk around a bit?”

  She mumbled something and shook her head.

  He got out, felt the wind coming off the lake, and zipped up his jacket. As he approached Hardwick, the man dropped his cigarette to the pavement and crushed it underfoot as though it were a wasp that had just stung him. His grimace morphed into an overly broad smile as he came forward, hand extended.

  “Davey! Good to see you!” The exuberance of the greeting was as false as the smile.

  Gurney shook his hand.

  Hardwick maintained the big grin but lowered his voice, “Never know who’s watching. Want the gift idea to look credible.” He opened the passenger door of the GTO, took out a slim gift-wrapped box, and handed it to him. “Unwrap it and look surprised. And happy.”

  In the package Gurney found what appeared to be a sleek new smartphone.

  “Advanced surveillance scanner,” said Hardwick. “Full instructions on the opening screen. Your password is ‘Sherlock.’ Set it to scan and leave it in your pocket. Automatically maps any space you’re in. Locates and identifies audio and video bugs, geo-trackers, recorders, transmitters. Stores the mapping, location, and frequency spectrum data associated with each device for later retrieval. Questions?”

  “Where’d you get this thing?”

  “Remember the tough little redhead techie on the Mellery case?”

  “Sergeant Robin Wigg?”

  “Lieutenant Wigg now. Running technology evaluation for the Anti-Terrorism Unit. We stayed in touch. I happened to mention that I had a hostile-surveillance concern. Things like that get her excited. She said I could have this item for three days. Unofficial field test.”

  “What prompted your surveillance concern?”

  “An odd little travel brochure.” Hardwick glanced around, up and down the street, then gestured toward the convenience store. “Let’s go inside.”

  Except for a tattooed girl with a green crew cut at the register, there were no other people in the store. Hardwick led the way to a wall of refrigerated drinks. “You want anything?”

  “Tell me about the brochure.”

  He opened one of the glass cooler doors and took out a bottle of springwater. “Chamber of commerce kind of brochure. Harpers Dale. You’ve heard of it?”

  “Hot air balloon rides?”

  “Plenty of shit like that. Tourist hot spot at the ass end of one of the Finger Lakes.”

  “So . . . you got a Harpers Dale travel brochure? And?”

  “It came in the mail. Someone had written the word ‘Unforgettable’ across the front of it. They even fucking underlined it.”

  “This means what to you?”

  “This means a world of shit. You remember why I brought you into this Hammond thing to begin with? I mean, apart from my wanting to save you from wasting your brain on some fucking porcupine.”

  “You wanted a front man—so Gil Fenton wouldn’t know you were personally involved in undermining his case.”

  “You remember why I didn’t want him to know?”

  “Because he had some dirt on you from something that went down the wrong way a long time ago. And if he got pissed off enough, he might drop the dime.”

  “That thing that went down the wrong way? It went down in Harpers Dale.”

  A teenager with droopy denim pants, an oversized red baseball hat, a fur jacket, and shiny onyx disk earrings came down the aisle, clicking his tongue to a hip-hop beat. He opened the cooler door next to Gurney and took out four cans of a super-caffeinated drink called WHACK.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” growled Hardwick. He paid the green-haired girl for the springwater, and they walked out of the store.

  Out by the GTO Hardwick lit a new cigarette and took a couple of fierce drags on it.

  “I guess there’s no way that Harpers Dale brochure might have been a coincidence?” Gurney asked.

  “No reason anyone else would mail me that kind of brochure. And that little addition—‘Unforgettable’—no way is that a coincidence. It’s a fucking threat. Fenton knows I’m working with the Hammonds. Which means there’s a bug somewhere.”

  “At the chalet?”

  “Most likely place.”

  “Okay. What now?”

  Hardwick made an acid-reflux face. “It’s a problem I was trying to avoid. But facts need to be faced. Bottom line, whatever Fenton knows or doesn’t know at this point makes no fucking difference. I’m in for the duration. If he wants to play the Harpers Dale card, that’s his business. But I’ll make fucking sure that fucker goes down with me.”

  He took out another cigarette and lit it.

  Gurney shrugged. “It may look like Fenton knows, but it’s not a certainty.”

  Hardwick coughed up some phlegm and spit it on the pavement. “Nothing’s a fucking certainty, but it’s a good working assumption.”

  “I’m just saying, in the event that he doesn’t know, and the brochure came to you by some other route, you shouldn’t advertise your involvement unnecessarily. It’s not like he signed his name to it. If you confront him, he could deny being the sender. You’d just be giving him the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to you.”

  “I shouldn’t stick my middle finger in his eye?”

  “I’d resist the temptation if I were you.” Gurney paused, then patted the jacket pocket where he’d stowed the device. “I assume you want me to visit the chalet with this little item to verify your surveillance suspicions?”

  “Absolutely. You might want to go over that Presidential Suite of yours, too.”

  Gurney nodded his agreement, then glanced at the Outback. “Can it identify the presence of a GPS tracker?”

  “According to Wigg, it picks up everything.”

  “You checked your own car?”

  “Yep. It’s clean.”

  “How about we check mine right now—before I meet with Angela?”

  Hardwick took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “Good idea.”

  MADELEINE WAS FULLY AWAKE NOW, EYEING THE SMARTPHONE screen with as much curiosity and concern as Gurney and Hardwick.

  A device more advanced than any Gurney had ever seen, the scanner was displaying a clear outline of the vehicle they were sitting in.

  Hardwick explained that he had set its “primary range perimeter,” one of its breakthrough features, to focus on th
e area defined by the Outback itself.

  Gurney gave him a quizzical look.

  Hardwick shrugged from the backseat. “All I can do is repeat what Wigg told me. According to her, this thing incorporates two technologies. One detects and displays transmission frequencies. The other is a new kind of short-range radar—CAM, stands for Close-Area Mapping. It detects and displays the perimeters of any enclosed space. Working together, they give you the precise location of any transmitter.”

  On the scanner’s screen, within a graphic representation of the steel shell of the vehicle, two red lights were blinking—one near the front of the engine compartment, the other near a rear wheel well. Next to each red light were three number sequences and the letters GPT.

  Madeleine looked at Hardwick. “What does all that mean?”

  “The letters indicate the type of device—GPT for geoposition trackers. The large number next to each is its transmitting frequency. The other two numbers pinpoint the location of the device in vertical inches above the ground and horizontal inches from the car’s perimeter.”

  Gurney looked skeptical. “Two flashing lights indicate the presence of two trackers?”

  “The little wizard doesn’t lie.”

  Madeleine’s eyes widened. “Those things are telling someone where we are, right now, sitting here in our car?”

  “You got it.”

  “Can you get rid of them?”

  “We can, but we need to give some thought to when, where, and how.” He looked at Gurney. “Any thoughts on how we should deal with it?”

  “That depends on who we think put them there, and why there are two of them.”

  “Simple redundancy? Or different performance characteristics for different conditions?”

  Gurney looked doubtful. “How many times have you found two trackers on one vehicle?”

  “Never.”

  “Maybe the two devices have separate sources?”

  Now it was Hardwick’s turn to look doubtful. “Like two different investigators? And neither one wants to rely on getting data from the other?”

  “Could be separate investigative agencies. And neither one knows about the tracker placed by the other.”