by John Verdon
But he said nothing, fearing the rawness of his emotion. He stood there in stony silence, astounded at her desire to bare her soul to a man who might be implicated in four murders.
Madeleine and Hammond arranged to meet at the chalet at 9:00 AM the following day, and some minutes later they all said their good-nights. Hammond wandered over to the hearth, picked up a poker, and began stirring the crumbling coals. Jane walked with Gurney and Madeleine out onto the chalet’s deck-like porch.
The sleet had stopped, but the air was frigid.
“Are you all right?”
So caught up was Gurney in his own rattled thoughts, it took a few seconds for him to realize Jane’s question was directed to him.
“Oh . . . yes . . . fine.”
Noting disbelief in her eyes, but unwilling to discuss what was really bothering him, Madeleine’s proposed meeting with Richard, he searched for another explanation.
“This may seem like a strange question, Jane, but I was intrigued by that green finial on one of your lamps. Do you know the one I mean?”
“The bloodstone? Green with red specks?”
“Yes. That one. Did it come with the lamp, or was it something special you got somewhere else?”
“It was always part of the lamp, as far as I know. Some things here are Richard’s, but the lamps and furniture belong to the lodge. Do you have a reason for asking?”
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“It is unusual.” She hesitated. “It’s funny you should ask about that particular item.”
“Why?”
“About a year ago it disappeared. A couple of days later it reappeared.”
“You never discovered the reason?”
“No. I asked around, of course. The maintenance people, the cleaning people, no one knew anything. I even mentioned it to Austen. No one had any idea how or why something like that could happen.” She looked at Gurney expectantly, as if he might offer a solution.
When he said nothing, she went on. “And now it’s happened again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just a month or so ago. I noticed because it’s my favorite lamp. I use it every night.”
“The same thing happened? The same way?”
“Yes. I noticed one evening it was gone. Two days later it was back.”
“This was around the time of the first suicide?”
“Before any of that. Before our world turned upside down.”
“You’re sure about the timing? That it was before the date of the first suicide?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Around the beginning of November, then?”
“Yes.”
“And when it happened the first time? You said it was about a year ago. Also at the beginning of November?”
“Yes. It must have been. I remember Austen making some silly joke about poltergeists being stirred up by Halloween.”
CHAPTER 32
During their drive back to the lodge, instead of immediately challenging her plan to meet with Hammond, Gurney tried to focus on why it bothered him so much.
Perhaps it was his sense that she was changing. Or the more disturbing possibility that she wasn’t changing at all—that the Madeleine in his brain was a fiction, and he was only now seeing the real person. He’d imagined her to be a tower of strength and good judgment. Now she seemed frightened and erratic, willing to put her trust in a therapist who might be a murderer.
As he was parking the Outback under the lodge portico, his bleak musings were cut short by the ringing of his phone.
Jack Hardwick started speaking the instant Gurney picked up.
“Got a hot lead for you—a man you need to meet tomorrow morning. Just down the road in Otterville.”
It took Gurney a moment to refocus. “Otterville’s a good three hours ‘down the road’ from here. Who’s this man and why does he matter?”
“The man is Moe Blumberg. Former owner and director of Camp Brightwater, which no longer exists. He converted it into some kind of bungalow colony, which he named Brightwater Cabins. But back when it was Camp Brightwater, it was the camp Steven Pardosa attended. Moe’s leaving tomorrow afternoon for Israel, where he spends his winters, so it’s got to be tomorrow morning, unless you want to track him down in Tel Aviv.”
“You don’t want to follow up on it yourself?”
“I’d do it with pleasure—but tomorrow morning I’ll be down in Teaneck, New Jersey. Friend of a friend set me up with the detective who caught the Leo Balzac suicide case. Man won’t talk to me on the phone, so I gotta make the trip. I figure I do him, you do Moe. Fair’s fair. What do you say, Sherlock?”
Before he could answer, his attention was diverted by Madeleine getting out of the car.
“I’m freezing,” she said. “I’m going inside.”
The air coming into the car through the open door was bitterly cold.
She closed the door and walked quickly into the lodge.
Her tone of voice brought back all the negative thoughts he’d been stewing in before Hardwick’s call. He got back on the phone and tried to force his mind to the matter at hand. “Have you actually spoken to this Blumberg guy?”
“Briefly. But first I spoke to the Pardosas. Face-to-face in Floral Park. Lot of grief. Lot of fantasy. They’re telling themselves that their Steven was finally turning things around. Embarking on a new life. Big prospects for the future. Can’t fathom that he’d kill himself. So much to look forward to. Et cetera. I think telling me that was their way of making it seem true. You keep saying something, it starts to sound real. They kept talking, and I kept nodding and shaking my head sadly and smiling at the right moments—all that empathic bullshit.”
“Jesus, Jack . . .”
“Anyway, the more I nodded the more they talked. The whole thing took a funny turn, though, when I asked if Steven had ever gone away to summer camp. Conversation got chilly. Obviously not their favorite topic. Seems he only went one year. Thirteen years ago. Some weird shit happened that summer, which they refused to discuss. But with a little nudging—actually, more than a little—they gave me Moe Blumberg’s phone number and address, which turned out to be his bungalow colony, which used to be his camp. You following?”
“I’m trying. Keep talking.”
“So I called Blumberg, who sounds kinda geriatric on the phone. I told him we were investigating the recent death of one of his former campers and needed some information about the summer he spent at Brightwater. He told me a big fire there a long time ago destroyed the office and all their records—handwritten on index cards in shoeboxes. But when I mentioned the specific year—thirteen years ago—that Steve was there, I got a funny reaction from him, like I got from Stevie’s parents. Didn’t want to talk about anyone or anything connected with that summer—at least not on the phone. Had to be face-to-face. So I made an appointment for you. Eleven AM. Tomorrow morning. Man leaves at two sharp for JFK.”
“What did you tell him about me?”
“That you’re a New York detective working on the case.”
“A private New York detective?”
“I may not have emphasized that specific adjective.”
“You told him I’m NYPD?”
“I believe I mentioned that connection.”
“In the present or past tense?”
“That’s a tough one. Easy to get confused about tenses. Like Bill Clinton said, it all depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
“If he asks about it, I’m not going to lie to him.”
“Naturally. The truth is our friend.”
Gurney sighed. “You want to give me his address?”
“Twenty-seven ninety-nine Brightwater Lane, Otterville.” He paused, presumably to give Gurney time to write it down, before switching gears. “Let me ask you something. You pretty sure you’re speaking from a bug-free environment?”
“Pretty sure, apart from the position trackers. I’m in my car, and my phone is clean, fa
r as I can tell. But Hammond’s chalet is another story.”
“What did you find?”
“Three audio transmitters.”
“No shit! I knew it!”
Taking out the scanner and retrieving the archived scan of the chalet, Gurney gave Hardwick the location, frequency, and signal-strength data that had been gathered. He then recounted Jane’s peculiar story regarding the consecutive November disappearances and reappearances of the bloodstone finial that contained one of the bugs.
“Holy fuck.” Hardwick whistled softly and zeroed in on the timing issue. “Someone was bugging Hammond at least a year before the shit hit the fan? Why?”
“That’s an interesting question. If we can answer it, we’ll be halfway home.”
Gurney ended the call, locked the car, and headed into the lodge.
He spotted Madeleine hunkered down by the fire in the Hearth Room.
Austen Steckle came out of his office. “Mr. Gurney, I need to talk to you.” He was glancing around, almost furtively, as if to emphasize the sensitivity of the subject matter. His shaved head was again glistening with sweat.
“Fenton came by looking for you. I gotta say, he didn’t look happy. In fact, he looked seriously pissed off. More pissed off than you’d want a man in his position to be. Just letting you know.”
“Did he say what his problem was?”
“He was throwing legal terms around. ‘Obstruction of justice’ was one of them. ‘Interfering in the investigation of a felony’ was another one. Boil it down, I got the feeling he expected you to be gone by now, and he’s pissed off at you still being here. All I’m doing is passing that along. Word to the wise. Man’s got the power to throw a hornet’s nest at you.”
Gurney blinked, almost laughed, at the image. “I appreciate the heads-up. By the way, did Peyton fill you in on our little get-together?”
“Yeah, little while ago. He said it was all cool. No problems. That true?”
Gurney shrugged. “I guess everything is relative. Do you happen to know who the naked woman with him might be?”
Steckle grinned. “Which naked woman? Peyton’s got a lot of naked women.”
“Then I guess it doesn’t matter much.”
It was Steckle’s turn to shrug. “So, basically, you’re saying your interview went okay?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“So, you got any idea when you folks are moving on? When Fenton comes back, I’d like to know what to tell him.”
“Soon. Tell him we’ll be moving on soon.”
They held each other’s gaze for a moment. Then Steckle nodded, turned away, and went back to his office.
Gurney went to join Madeleine in the Hearth Room.
He took the chair next to hers, facing the fire. He closed his eyes, searching for the right way to raise the issue that was gnawing at him—when she raised it herself.
“Do you really think it’s a bad idea for me to talk to Richard?”
“I certainly think it’s a questionable idea.”
“At the chalet you looked like you were about to explode.”
“To be honest, I was shocked. Your desire to share something intensely private with someone in his situation baffles me. Isn’t this the same guy you were furious at yesterday? The guy you told me was a liar because he claimed to have no insight into himself? The guy you told me was trying to manipulate us, make fools of us?”
Madeleine sighed. “I was angry because he hit a raw nerve. I was actually the one who had no insight. I was the one who thought the past had been dealt with. He wasn’t the dishonest one, I was.” She uttered an ironic little laugh. “Nothing leaves you more vulnerable to your past than the illusion that you’ve dealt with it.”
It struck him that there was a great deal of truth in that. But he still didn’t think that her plan to discuss her past with Hammond was a good idea.
As if in response to this silent objection, she looked pleadingly into his eyes. “I have to do something. Now. Coming here has brought up memories. I can’t get them out of my mind.”
He wanted to know exactly what memories she was talking about. But he was afraid to ask. He was afraid he might discover that the part of Madeleine he’d never known was the part that mattered the most.
She turned toward him, her hands gripping the padded leather arm of her chair. “If I don’t do something I’ll fall apart. I can feel it. Please understand. I have no other options. At least seeing Hammond tomorrow morning is something.”
CHAPTER 33
There was a ringing sound in his dream. The sound morphed into an image of something glittering. The glittering blue-green eyes of Richard Hammond. Glittering. Ringing.
“David, it’s your phone.” Madeleine was standing next to the bed in a white terry-cloth robe. Her hair was wet. She was extending the phone toward him.
He took it, blinked to focus his vision, saw that the ID had been blocked. The time on the phone was 6:46 AM. He pushed himself up into a sitting position on the side of the bed.
“Gurney here.”
“Sorry to wake you, David. It’s Robin Wigg.”
“No problem. I should have been up already.”
“Ever since I sent you that text, I’ve been debating the need for a follow-up call.”
“I gathered from the wording that it’s a sensitive area.”
“An understatement. By the way, I’m calling unofficially, from out of the office. I’ll get to the point. First, regarding that photo of an open phone. The transmitter inserted in the place of the normal microphone is a highly restricted device. I don’t mean restricted to the feds in general. I mean restricted to the inner sanctum of national security. Are you hearing what I’m telling you?”
“That I’m on the radar of some dangerous people?”
“Another understatement. Let me be clear, and brief. What’s generally known about the FBI, CIA, NSA, and military intelligence operations doesn’t scratch the surface of what’s really happening. The kind of people who are taking an interest in you have access to records of every website you’ve ever visited, every phone number you’ve ever called, every purchase you’ve ever made with a credit card, every book you’ve taken out of a library. Unless you’ve disabled your cell phone GPS, they know every route you’ve ever driven, every address you’ve ever stopped at, every friend, every doctor, every lawyer, every therapist. And that’s just for starters. If they decide that you might impede an operation that has a national security dimension, they can record your phone calls, bug your home. They can review your bank statements, your tax returns, your high school and college records, your medical history. And they can make you disappear for extended interrogations with no statutory limits, simply by concocting a link between you and some terrorist organization that may not even exist. ‘Protecting the homeland’ has become a blank check in the hands of some very ruthless people. Any questions?”
“About a hundred. But I don’t think I want to hear the answers.”
“Good luck, David. And be very, very careful.”
He thanked her for taking the personal risk involved in speaking to him. But she’d already ended the call.
Given the picture she’d painted of a shadowy governmental nemesis, it would be easy to construct paranoid scenarios. On the other hand, given the nature of the government’s massive intrusion into private lives, could any scenario really be dismissed as paranoid? The advances in data gathering and manipulation were racing far ahead of any ethical consensus regarding their use. Putting such powerful tools in the hands of ambitious, self-righteous bureaucrats was like giving weapons of mass destruction to class bullies.
He realized this ongoing societal train wreck was beyond his control. But he did have control over where to invest his time and effort. Maintaining his focus—or dividing it appropriately between the case issues and Madeleine’s issues—would be his main challenge. He could sometimes forget, in his immersion in an investigation, that he was someone’s husband
.
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready to leave?” Madeleine had come back into the bedroom alcove, carrying her iPad, with a loud piece of music playing on it—one of the surveillance-defeating techniques he’d suggested.
“I’ll be okay,” he said, getting up from the bed. “If I’m out by eight, I can make it to Otterville by eleven. By the way, how were you planning to get to Hammond’s place?”
“I could take one of the lodge Jeeps, or even walk, so long as it’s not sleeting or snowing. It’s less than a mile.”
“You’re supposed to be there at nine?”
“Richard said I could come earlier and have breakfast with them. Actually, he said we both could come, but I didn’t think you’d want to.”
The best response he could muster was a tight-lipped nod. He muttered something about showering and shaving, went into the bathroom, and closed the door.
He knew the anger he felt was absurd. But he couldn’t deny its reality.
AS HE WAS PREPARING TO DEPART FOR OTTERVILLE, HE EXPLAINED to Madeleine where the scanner had pinpointed the three audio bugs in the chalet, and where she should try to sit with Hammond to limit their effectiveness.
“Keep your back to those transmitter locations, and speak as softly as you can. You could even bring your iPad and have that music playing. You could tell Hammond it helps you relax.”
She extended her arms toward him, her eyes filling with tears. She held him tightly—desperately, it seemed.
“What is it?” he asked.
“My decision to come here was a terrible mistake.”
“We can leave anytime you want.”
“No. The problem is inside me. Running away now won’t help.” She was silent for a long moment. “You should be on your way. Maybe Mr. Blumberg will have the answer to your Wolf Lake mystery.”
BEING ALONE IN HIS CAR MADE IT EASIER TO FOCUS ON THE CASE. HE decided to concentrate on identifying the discrepancy he sensed in Angela Castro’s answers to his questions at Tabitha’s Dollhouse. He took out his phone, located his recording of the interview, and tapped the “Play” icon.