by John Verdon
“Did the creature ask you any questions?”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. Any questions at all.”
“No questions. Didn’t say much of anything. ‘Flowers for you.’ Something like that. Squeaky little voice. Funny nose.”
“Funny how?”
“Sharp. Like a beak.”
“Anything else odd that you can remember?”
“No, that’s it. Hooked beak of a nose.”
“How tall?”
“My height, at the most. Maybe even an inch or two shorter.”
“And your height would be …?”
“Exactly sixty-two inches. Five foot two, eyes of blue. My eyes, not his. His were hidden behind sunglasses. Not a speck of sun that day, mind you. But sunglasses aren’t for the sun anymore, are they? They’re a fashion item. Did you know that? A fashion item.”
“Thank you for your time, Marjorie. You’ve been a great help. I’ll be in touch.”
Gurney broke the connection and handed the phone back to Carol.
She blinked. “Now I remember what the problem was.”
“What problem?”
“What Marjorie called me about that day. It was to ask if the delivery person had left a gift card by mistake at the desk. Because there wasn’t any with the flowers. But what was that question you were asking about the number of bouquets, whether there was one or two?”
“If you look closely at the video,” said Gurney, “you’ll see that those chrysanthemums were in two separate wrappings. Two bouquets were being delivered here, not one.”
“I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“It means that the ‘little creature’ made a second stop on the property after he saw Mrs. Stottlemeyer.”
“Or before seeing her, because she said he only had one bouquet with him.”
“I’d be willing to bet that the other bouquet was stashed temporarily outside her door.”
“Why?”
“Because I think our little creature came here to kill Mary Spalter, and he brought the second bouquet along to give him a cover story for knocking on her door—and to give her a reason to open it.”
“I don’t follow you. Why not just bring one bouquet—and tell me that he was delivering it to Mrs. Spalter? Why bring Marjorie Stottlemeyer into it at all? That doesn’t make sense.”
“I think it does. If there was a record in your visitors’ log of a delivery being made to Mary Spalter shortly before her death, the whole affair might have been looked into more carefully. It was evidently important to the killer that Mary’s death appear to be accidental. And it worked. I suspect there wasn’t even a thorough autopsy.”
Her mouth was open. “So … you’re saying … we really did have a murderer here … in my office … and in Marjorie’s house … and …”
Suddenly she looked vulnerable, frightened. And just as suddenly, Gurney was filled with a fear that he was doing what he’d warned himself against: He was moving much too fast. He was making assumptions on top of assumptions and mistaking them for rational conclusions. And another troubling question came to mind. Why was he spelling out his murder hypothesis to this woman? Was he trying to scare her? Observe her reaction? Or did he just want to have someone ratify the way he was connecting the dots—as if that would prove he was right?
But what if he was connecting the wrong dots, creating the wrong picture entirely? What if the so-called dots were just random isolated events? At times like this he always recalled, uneasily, that everyone on earth at a particular latitude sees the same stars in the sky. But no two cultures see the same constellations. He’d seen evidence of the phenomenon again and again: The patterns we perceive are determined by the stories we want to believe.
Chapter 23
Click
In an uncertain and uncomfortable frame of mind, Gurney pulled into the first convenience store parking lot he reached after leaving Emmerling Oaks.
He bought a large strong coffee, plus a couple of granola bars to compensate for the lunch he hadn’t had, and retreated to his car. He ate one of the granola bars—which turned out to be hard, tasteless, and sticky. He tossed the other one in his glove compartment for some moment of more desperate hunger and took a few swallows of lukewarm coffee.
Then he got down to business.
Before he left Carol Blissy’s office, he’d downloaded the floral delivery video files to his phone, and now he sent the office segment to Bolo’s cell number with a cover text message: “Does the little person with the flowers remind you of anyone?”
He sent the same video material to Hardwick with a message saying: “Individual carrying the flowers may be a person of interest in the Spalter case—a possible link between the deaths of Mary and Carl. More to come.”
He watched the parking area segment of the video again, confirming his impression of the sign on the minivan door: that it wasn’t painted directly on the vehicle but was the removable magnetic kind. Also, that there was only one sign and that it was on the driver’s-side door rather than the passenger’s-side door—an odd choice, since under most circumstances it is the passenger door that is more visible to the public. It was a choice that made sense, however, if the driver wanted to be able to remove it quickly, without having to stop.
There was no phone number on the sign. He did an Internet search for “Flowers by Florence” and found several businesses by that name, but none within a hundred miles of Emmerling Oaks. Neither fact surprised him.
He finished his coffee, now less than lukewarm, and headed for Walnut Crossing—feeling both energized and frustrated by what he viewed as the case’s two main oddities: the light pole obstruction that seemed to turn the shooter’s supposed location into an impossibility, and a relatively simple murder objective combined with an MO that seemed way too complicated.
Someone shot Carl the way Oswald shot Kennedy. Not the way wives shoot their husbands. Not the way mob guys settle their disputes. It seemed to Gurney that the objective could have been accomplished in a dozen easier ways—ways that would have involved a hell of a lot less planning, coordination, and precision than a five-hundred-yard sniper shot fired at a funeral ceremony across a river with a silenced rifle from inside a building full of squatters. Assuming, of course, that the shot came from somewhere in that building to begin with. From a window with a clean line of sight to Carl Spalter’s temple. And speaking of complications, why kill Carl’s mother first? The most obvious reason, given the outcome, would be to get Carl into the cemetery. But what if that murder was for another reason entirely?
Turning these tangled questions over in his mind on the way home made the hour-long trip disappear. Immersed in possible explanations and linkages, he was barely aware of where he was, until, at the top of the mountain road that dead-ended into his property, the text message ring of his phone brought his attention back to his surroundings. He continued up through the sloping pasture to the house before checking the screen. It was the reply from Bolo that he’d been hoping for: “yes yes. same shades. funny noze. the pisser man.”
As questionable as the witness might be—Hardwick would surely make that point again—this confirmation (of sorts) that the odd little character had been present at both events gave Gurney his first sense of solidity about the case. It was little more than the clicking together of the first two pieces of a five-hundred-piece puzzle, but it felt good.
A click was a click. And the first click had a special power.
Chapter 24
All the Trouble in the World
Entering the kitchen, Gurney saw a plastic shopping bag, bulging with angular objects, and a note from Madeleine on the sideboard.
Tomorrow is supposed to be a nice day. I picked up some things from the hardware store so we could get started on the house for the chickens. Okay? My schedule got moved around today, so I came home for a couple of hours, now have to return to the clinic. Won’t be home tonight till around seven. You should go ahead
and eat first. There’s stuff in the fridge. Love—M.
He looked into the bag, saw a retractable metal tape measure, a large ball of yellow nylon string, two canvas carpenter’s aprons, two carpenter’s pencils, a yellow legal pad, two pairs of work gloves, two bubble levels, and a handful of metal spikes for laying out corner positions.
Whenever Madeleine took a concrete step toward a project that would require his participation, his first reaction was always dismay. But due to their recent discussion of his relentless focus on blood and mayhem—or perhaps due to the intimacy they shared following that discussion—he tried to view the coop project more positively.
Perhaps a shower would put him in the right frame of mind.
Half an hour later he returned to the kitchen—refreshed, hungry, and feeling a bit better about Madeleine’s eagerness to get the chicken coop started. In fact, he felt revitalized enough to take the first step. He took the hardware store items from the sideboard, got a hammer from the mudroom, and went out onto the patio. He eyed the area where Madeleine had indicated she wanted the coop and fenced-in run to be located—an area between the asparagus and the big apple tree, where Horace and his little flock of hens would be visible from the breakfast table. Where Horace could crow happily and establish his territory.
Gurney went over to the asparagus patch—a raised planting bed enclosed by four-by-four timbers—and laid Madeleine’s purchases out on the grass next to it. He took the yellow pad and a pencil and roughed in the positions of the raised bed, the patio, and the apple tree. Then he paced off the approximate dimensions of the coop and run.
As he was getting the metal tape measure so he could be more precise about the distances, he heard the house phone ringing. He left his pad and pencil on the patio and went inside to the den. It was Hardwick.
“So who’s the fucking midget?”
“Good question. All I can tell you is that he—I’ve been told it’s a he—was in Mary Spalter’s retirement community the day she died, and in that Long Falls apartment house five days before Carl Spalter was shot and again on the day he was shot.”
“Is this something Klemper should have known?”
“Estavio Bolocco says he told Klemper that he saw him in the apartment on both occasions. That should have alerted Klemper to something—at least raised a question about the timing of the mother’s death.”
“But there’s no witness to that conversation between Klemper and Bolocco, right?”
“Not unless Freddie, the trial witness, was there. But, like I told you before, he disappeared.”
Hardwick sighed loudly. “Without corroboration, this supposed conversation between Klemper and Bolocco is useless.”
“Bolocco’s recognition of the person in the Emmerling Oaks security video connects the deaths of the mother and the son. That sure as hell isn’t useless.”
“By itself it doesn’t prove police misconduct—which makes it useless for the purpose of the appeal, which is our only purpose, which is something I keep telling you, which you seem to be fucking deaf to.”
“And what you’re deaf to is—”
“I know—I’m deaf to justice, deaf to guilt and innocence. Is that your point?”
“Okay, Jack, I have to go now. I’ll keep passing along whatever useless stuff I turn up.” There was a silence. “By the way, you might want to check on the status of the other people who testified against Kay. Be interesting to see how many of them are locatable.”
Hardwick said nothing.
Gurney ended the call.
Glancing at the clock and seeing that it was nearly six reminded him that he was hungry. He went into the kitchen and made himself a cheese omelet.
Eating calmed him. It took away most of the tension arising from the ongoing collisions between his approach to the case and Hardwick’s. Gurney had made it clear from the beginning that if the man wanted his help, it was going to be provided on Gurney’s terms. That aspect of the arrangement was not going to change. Neither, it seemed, was Hardwick’s unhappiness with it.
As he stood at the sink washing his omelet pan, his eyes grew heavy and the idea of a quick nap became very attractive. He’d just lie down for one of those restorative twelve-minute dips into semi-sleep that he’d relied on to get through double shifts in his NYPD days. He dried his hands, went into the bedroom, put his phone on the night table, took off his shoes, stretched out on top of the bedspread, and closed his eyes.
His phone awakened him.
He sensed immediately that his nap had far exceeded its intended twelve minutes. In fact, the clock by the bed said it was 7:32 p.m. He’d been asleep for more than an hour.
The ID said it was Kyle Gurney.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Dad! You sound sleepy. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No problem. Where are you? What’s up?”
“I’m here in my apartment watching this special legal-issues interview show? Criminal Conflict? There’s this lawyer being interviewed who keeps mentioning your name.”
“What? What lawyer?”
“Some guy by the name of Bincher. Rex, Lex, something like that?”
“On television?”
“On your favorite channel. RAM-TV. Simultaneous webcast on their website.”
Gurney grimaced. Even if he hadn’t had such horrendous trouble with RAM-TV during the Good Shepherd investigation, the idea that anyone was talking about him on the trashiest, most slanted cable news channel in the history of broadcasting would have been repellent. And what the hell was Bincher up to, anyway?
“This thing with the lawyer is on right now?”
“As we speak. A friend of mine happened to be watching it and heard them mention the name Gurney. So he called me, and I turned it on. Just go to their website and click on the ‘Live Stream’ button.”
Gurney got up from the bed, hurried into the den, and followed Kyle’s instructions on his laptop—alternately speculating on Bincher’s likely game and reliving the experience he’d had with RAM-TV’s creepy programming chief just a few months earlier.
On his third try he got to the program. The screen showed two men sitting in angular chairs on opposite sides of a low table that held a pitcher of water and two glasses. At the base of the screen, white letters on a bold red stripe spelled out CRIMINAL CONFLICT. Below that, moving letters on a blue stripe appeared to be scrolling an endless series of panicky news flashes about every form of turmoil, disaster, and disagreement in the world—a terrorist nuclear threat, a toxic tilapia scare, a celebrity altercation involving colliding Porsches.
Holding a few sheets of paper in his hand, looking seriously concerned in the vacuous style of TV interviewers everywhere, the man on the left was leaning toward the man on the right. Gurney had tuned in as the interviewer was in midsentence:
“… quite an indictment of the system, Lex, if I may use that legal term.”
The man across the table, already leaning forward himself, leaned farther forward. He was smiling, but the expression appeared to be nothing more than a perfunctory baring of unfriendly teeth. His voice was sharp, nasal, and loud. “Brian, in all my years of criminal defense experience, I’ve never encountered a more egregious example of rotten police work. An absolute subversion of justice.”
Brian looked appalled. “You’d started itemizing some of the problems just before the break, Lex. Crime scene contradictions, perjury, missing records of witness interviews—”
“And now you can add to that at least one missing witness. I just got a text message on that subject from a member of my investigatory team. Plus sexual misconduct with a possible suspect. Plus a gross failure to examine obvious alternate scenarios for the murder—such as a fatal falling-out with organized crime, other members of the same family with bigger and better motives for murder than Kay Spalter, or even a politically motivated assassination. In fact, Brian, I’m on the verge of requesting a special prosecutor to look into what may be a massive criminal cover-up of a taint
ed prosecution. It’s incredible to me that the whole organized crime possibility was never pursued.”
The interviewer, his face a picture of empty-headed consternation, gestured with the papers in his hand. “So what you’re saying here, Lex, is that this troubling situation could be a lot bigger than anyone thought?”
“That’s an understatement, Brian! I can see some major law enforcement careers going up in flames! Everyone from the state police to the DA could be heading for a legal ripsaw! And I’m not afraid to turn it on!”
“It seems like you managed to uncover a lot of damaging facts in a very short time. You mentioned earlier that you’d recruited a star detective from the NYPD, Dave Gurney, to work with you—the same detective who recently tore the official version of the Good Shepherd case to shreds. Is Dave Gurney the one responsible for your new information?”
“Let me put it this way, Brian. I’m running a powerful team. I’m calling the shots, and I’ve got great people executing the plays. Gurney has the best homicide clearance record in the history of the NYPD. And I have him working with the ideal partner, Jack Hardwick—a detective who was forced out of the state police for helping Gurney discover the truth about the Good Shepherd. The stuff we’re coming up with is pure dynamite—one bombshell after another. Let me tell you—with their help, I plan to blow the Spalter case sky high.”
“Lex, you just delivered the perfect closing line. And now we’re about out of time. Thanks so much for joining us this evening. This is Brian Bork for Criminal Conflict, your nightly ringside seat at today’s most explosive legal battles!”
A voice from behind Gurney startled him.
“What are you watching?”
It was Madeleine. She was standing in the den doorway.
“You look wet,” he said.
“It just started raining. Didn’t you notice?”
“I got sucked into this, in more ways than one.” He gestured toward the computer.
She came into the room, frowning at the screen. “What was he just saying about you?”