She turned the onion around in her hand, peeling off a couple of layers of the tough outer skin.
“How about the pain in your side?”
“Fine, at the moment. It’s an intermittent thing, comes and goes.”
“Every ten minutes or so, I think you told me?”
“More or less.”
“How often did you feel it today?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Not sure if you felt it at all?”
“I couldn’t say.”
She nodded, sliced a large zucchini down the middle, laid the halves on the board, and began chopping them into bite-size half-moons.
He blinked, stared at her, cleared his throat. “So what you’re saying is that I should let Kim hire me for another day?”
“Did I say that?”
“I think you did.”
There was a long silence. Madeleine cut up an eggplant, a yellow squash, and a sweet red pepper, then put everything into a large bowl that she carried to the stove, tilting the contents into a sizzling wok. “She’s an interesting young woman.”
“In what way?”
“Smart, attractive, ambitious, subtle, energetic—don’t you think?”
“Hmm. She definitely has some depth.”
“Maybe you should introduce her to Kyle.”
“My son?”
“I don’t know any other Kyle.”
“What is it about them that makes you think …?”
“I can see them together, that’s all. Different personalities, but on the same wavelength.”
He tried to imagine the hypothetical relationship chemistry. In less than a minute, he gave up the effort. Too many possibilities, too little data. He envied the efficiency of Madeleine’s intuition. It enabled her to leap over unknowns that stopped him dead.
Chapter 12
The Madness of Max Clinter
“Arriving at destination, on the right.”
Gurney’s GPS had just delivered him to an unmarked intersection at which a narrow dirt road teed into the paved road—a road he’d been following for two miles without seeing a single house that didn’t look like it was falling down.
On one side of the dirt road was an open steel gate. On the other side was a dead oak tree, the scar of a lightning bolt etched in its bark. Nailed to the trunk was a human skeleton—or, Gurney assumed, a remarkably convincing replica. Hanging from the skeleton’s neck was a hand-painted sign: THE LAST TRESPASSER.
Based on what Dave knew of Max Clinter so far, including the impression he’d gotten during a phone conversation with him that morning, the sign was not surprising.
Gurney made the turn onto the rutted lane, which soon traversed, like a primitive causeway, the center of a large beaver pond. Beyond the pond it continued through a thicket of swamp maples and, beyond that, arrived at a log cabin built on a raised patch of dry land, surrounded by an expanse of water and marsh grasses.
There was a peculiar border around the cabin: a moatlike swath of tangled weeds enclosed by a fine-mesh fence. The pathway to the cabin door passed through the weed swath, separated from it by a length of fencing on either side. As Gurney was taking this in, speculating on its purpose, the cabin door opened and a man emerged onto a small stone step. He was dressed in a military camouflage shirt and pants, jarringly offset by a pair of snakeskin boots. He had a hard look about him.
“Vipers,” he said in a gravelly voice.
“Sorry?”
“In the weeds. That’s what you were wondering about, wasn’t it?” His speech was oddly accented, his eyes intent on Gurney’s. “Small rattlesnakes. The small ones are the most dangerous. Word gets around. Excellent deterrent.”
“I wouldn’t think they’d be much use, hibernating in cold weather,” said Gurney pleasantly. “I assume you’re Mr. Clinter?”
“Maximilian Clinter. Weather is only an issue for physical snakes. It’s the idea of the snakes that keeps the undesirables out. Weather has no effect on the snakes in their heads. You get my point, Mr. Gurney? I’d invite you in, but I never invite anyone in. Can’t handle it. PTSD. If you went in, I’d have to stay out. Two’s a crowd. Can’t fuckin’ breathe.” He grinned, a little wildly. His accent, Gurney realized, was an antic brogue that came and went, like Marlon Brando’s in Missouri Breaks. “I entertain all my guests in the open air. Hope you’re not offended. Follow me.”
He led Gurney around the outside of the fenced weeds to a weathered picnic table in back of the cabin. Beyond the table, parked just at the edge of the bog, was an original military Humvee, painted desert tan.
“You drive that thing?” asked Gurney.
“On special occasions.” Clinter winked conspiratorially as he sat at the table. He picked up a pair of spring-loaded hand exercisers from the bench seat and began squeezing them. “Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Gurney, and tell me what your interest is in the Good Shepherd case.”
“I told you on the phone. I was asked to—”
“Look over the lovely shoulder of the lovelorn Miss Heart?”
“Miss Heart?”
“Corazón means ‘heart.’ Basic Spanish. But I’m sure you knew that. Perfect name for her, don’t you think? Affairs of the heart. Passions gone awry. Bleeding heart for the victims of crime. But how does this involve Maximilian Clinter?” In this last question, the transient brogue disappeared. The man’s eyes settled into a sharp, steady gaze.
Gurney had to decide quickly how to proceed. He opted for brash openness. “Kim thinks you know stuff about the case, stuff you’re not telling her. She can’t figure you out. I think you scare the shit out of her.” Gurney would swear that Clinter was pleased by this but didn’t want to show it. Cards on the table seemed to be the way to go. “Incidentally, I was impressed with the story of your Buffalo performance. If half of what I heard is true, you’re a talented man.”
Clinter smiled. “Big Honey.”
“Say again?”
“That was Frankie Benno’s name in the mob.”
“Because of what a sweet guy he was?”
Clinter’s eyes glittered. “His hobby. He was a beekeeper.”
Gurney laughed at the thought of it. “And what about you, Max? What sort of gentleman are you? I heard that you might be in the specialty-arms business.”
Clinter gave him a shrewd look, his hands compressing the exercisers rapidly, almost effortlessly. “Deactivated collectibles.”
“You mean guns that don’t work?”
“The big military hardware has all been rendered more or less unfireable. I also have some interesting smaller pieces that do work. But I’m not a dealer. Dealers need federal licenses. So I’m not a dealer. I’m what the law calls a hobbyist. And sometimes I sell something in my personal collection to another hobbyist. You get my point?”
“I think so. What kind of guns do you sell?”
“Unusual guns. And I have to feel in each case that it’s the right match for the particular individual. I make that perfectly clear. If all you want’s a fuckin’ Glock, then go to fuckin’ Walmart. That’s my firearms philosophy, and I’m not shy about it.” The brogue was creeping back in. “On the other hand, if you want a Second World War Vickers machine gun, more or less deactivated, with a matching antiaircraft tripod, we might have reason to converse, assuming you were a hobbyist like myself.”
Gurney pivoted lazily around on the bench so he could look out over the brown water of the marsh. He yawned and stretched, then smiled at Clinter. “So tell me, do you actually know anything about the Good Shepherd case, as Kim thinks you do? Or is that all just a bunch of bobbing and weaving and bullshit?”
The man stared at Gurney for a long time before he spoke. “Is it bullshit that all the cars were black? Is it bullshit that two of the victims went to the same high school in Brooklyn? Is it bullshit that the Good Shepherd murders tripled the ratings and profits of RAM News? Is it bullshit that the FBI erected a total wall of silence around the case?”
G
urney turned his hands up in bafflement. “What’s that supposed to add up to?”
“Evil, Mr. Gurney. At the bottom of this case, there is an incredible evil.” His hands were squeezing, releasing, squeezing, releasing the exercisers with movements so rapid they appeared convulsive. “By the way, did you know there are some fucked-up people in the world who have orgasms watching films of car crashes? Did you know that?”
“I think someone made a movie about it back in the nineties. But that isn’t what you think the Good Shepherd case is about … is it?”
“I don’t think anything. I just have questions. Lots of questions. Was the manifesto just the wrapping on a different sort of bomb—a Christmas present in an Easter box? Did our Clyde have a Bonnie in his car? Is the key to it all the set of six little animals from Noah’s Ark? Are there secret links among the victims no one’s looked at yet? Was it wealth itself that painted targets on their backs or was it how they got the wealth? Now, that’s an interesting question, don’t you think?” He winked at Gurney. It was clear he wasn’t interested in an answer. He was on a rhetorical roll all his own. “So many questions. Might the shepherd be a shepherdess—a Bonnie by herself—a crazy bitch with a grudge against the rich?”
He fell silent. The sole sound in the eerie stillness was the repetitive squeaking of the springs in his exercisers.
“You must be developing very strong hands,” said Gurney.
Clinter flashed a fierce grin. “The last time I met the Good Shepherd, I was terribly, shamefully, tragically underprepared. That won’t be the case next time.”
Gurney had a momentary vision of the climactic scene in Moby-Dick. Ahab with his hands gripping the harpoon, driving it into the back of the whale. Ahab and the whale, the entangled pair, disappearing into the depths of the sea forever.
Chapter 13
Serial Massacre
Once Gurney had departed from Clinter’s outlandish compound—from its real or imagined vipers, its swampy moat, its skeleton sentinel—and had put a few miles behind him, he pulled over into a roadside turnaround. It was near the top of a gentle rise that gave him a view of the northern end of Lake Cayuga, as brilliantly blue as the sky above it.
He took out his phone, entered Jack Hardwick’s number, and got voice mail.
“Hey, Jack, I have questions. Just had a talk with Mr. Clinter. Need your perspective on a couple of things. Call me. Sooner the better. Thanks.”
Then he called Kim.
“Dave?”
“Hi. I’m up in your general neighborhood, looking into a few things. Thought it might make sense to have a word with Robby Meese. You have an address and phone number for him?”
“What … Why do you want to talk to him?”
“Is there a reason you don’t want me to?”
“No. It’s just that … I don’t know … Sure, okay, just a second.” In less than a minute, she picked up again. “He has an apartment in the Tipperary Hill neighborhood, 3003 South Lowell.” Then she read off a cell number, which Dave copied down. “Remember, he’s using the name Montague, not Meese. But … what are you going to do?”
“Just ask questions, see if I can find out anything that makes sense.”
“Sense?”
“The more I learn about this project of yours—or the case it’s based on—the fuzzier it gets. I’m hungry for a little clarity.”
“Clarity? You think you’re going to get that from him?”
“Maybe not directly, but he seems to be a player in our little drama, and I don’t really know who the hell he is. That makes me uncomfortable.”
“I told you everything I know about him.” She sounded hurt, defensive.
“I’m sure you did.”
“Then why—”
“If you want my help, Kim, you need to give me some room.”
She hesitated. “Okay … I guess. Be careful. He’s … weird.”
“Guys with more than one last name often are.”
He ended the call. The phone rang as he was putting it in his pocket. The ID said it was J. Hardwick.
“Hello, Jack, thanks for getting back.”
“I’m just a humble public servant, Sherlock. What can I do for the famous detective today?”
“I’m not sure. What kind of Good Shepherd file stuff can you lay your hands on?”
“Oh, I see.” His voice had the arch tone Gurney hated.
“See what?”
“I sense that some of Sherlock’s retired brain cells are coming back to life.”
Gurney ignored this. “So what do you have access to?”
Hardwick cleared his throat with stomach-turning thoroughness. “Original incident reports, victim ID and background data, photographs of large-caliber bullet damage to faces and skulls—Speaking of which, a colorful anecdote comes to mind. One of the victims, a fancy real-estate lady, lost major portions of her jaw and head to that Desert Eagle cannonball. Young fella on the evidence team, combing the crime scene, made a discovery he’ll never forget. A dime-size piece of the lady’s earlobe was hanging on the branch of a roadside sumac bush, with her big diamond-stud earring still in it. Can you picture it, ace? That’s the kind of thing tends to stick in the memory.” He paused for a moment, as if to permit full appreciation of the image. “So anyway, we got lots of details like that, plus ME findings, evidence-team reports, lab reports up the ass, investigative reports, FBI Behavioral Unit’s profile of the shooter, yadda, yadda, yadda, tons of other shit—some accessible, some not. What are you looking for?”
“How about whatever you can send me without too much trouble?”
Hardwick responded with his sandpaper laugh. “Everything the FBI is involved in is potential trouble. Pack of arrogant, political, control-freak assholes.” He paused. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll send you a couple of things right away, more later. Keep checking your e-mail.” Hardwick was always most obliging when regulations were likely to be broken and sensitive toes stepped on.
“By the way,” said Gurney, “I just came from a meeting with Mr. Clinter.”
The Hardwick laugh erupted again, louder. “Maxie made an impression on you?”
“You ever seen that place of his?”
“Bones, snakes, Hummers, and horseshit. That the place you’re talking about?”
“Sounds like you don’t give Mr. Clinter’s ramblings a lot of weight.”
“You do?”
“I haven’t decided yet what to make of him. There’s a psycho component in the package, but there’s also a performer-pretending-to-be-a-psycho component. It’s hard to pin down the line between them. He said something about PTSD. You happen to know if that came from the drunken crash that got him fired?”
“No. The First Gulf War. Friendly fire from a helicopter blew up a guy next to him. Back then Maxie toughed it out, stuffed it, whatever. But it probably set him up for his big collapse after the Good Shepherd mess. Who knows? Maybe he thought he was shooting at a fucking helicopter that night.”
“Anyone pay attention to his theories about the case?”
“He didn’t have theories. He had wild-ass ideas, based on whatever shit popped into his head. You ever listen to a nutcase explain how the number of legs on a chair multiplied by the mystical number seven gives you the number of days in a lunar month? Maxie was loaded to the eyeballs with that kind of crap.”
“So you don’t think he has anything real to contribute?”
Hardwick grunted thoughtfully. “The only real things Maxie brings to the table are hatred, obsession, and a crazy kind of smarts.”
It was a combination Gurney had run into before. It was a recipe for disaster.
A quarter of an hour later, just outside Auburn, having cruised through the pastoral hills that separated Cayuga Lake from Owasco Lake, Gurney pulled into a combination gas station/mini-mart to refill his tank with gas and recharge his brain with a large coffee. According to his dashboard clock, it was 1:05 P.M.
After getting his gas receipt,
he pulled away from the pump to a corner of the parking area to sip his coffee and plan his interview with Meese-Montague.
His cell phone rang. It was a text message: CHECK YOUR E-MAIL.
When he did, he discovered one from Hardwick. The covering message said, “See attached documents: Incident Reports (6), Prior Movements Supplement, ViCAP Reports, Common Elements Summary, Pre-Autopsy Victim Pics.”
The title of each of the incident documents was composed of a number between one and six, which apparently denoted its place in the series, plus the victim’s surname. Gurney selected the document 1-MELLANI and began scrolling through its fifty-two pages.
Included were the responding officer’s observations, crime-scene diagrams, photographs of the site, an evidence-based event reconstruction with hypothetical narrative, vehicle-damage report, evidence-collection report, list of units and officers responding, ME’s preliminary report, and a list of lab tests.
If this first of six incident reports was representative of the others in length and detail, there would be over three hundred fifty pages to wade through. This was not a task Gurney intended to undertake on the three-inch screen of his cell phone.
He went back to the list of attachments and selected the Common Elements document—the factors linking the six homicides. He was pleased to see one page with thirteen concise points.
1. Attacks occurred on consecutive weekends, between March 18 and April 1, 2000.
2. Attacks occurred within 2-hour window, 9:11 P.M. to 11:10 P.M.
3. Attacks occurred within a 200-mile-by-50-mile rectangle extending across central New York into Massachusetts.
4. Attacks occurred on leftward road curves with good forward visibility.
5. Moderate vehicle speeds (46–58 mph) at time of gunshot.
6. Little to no traffic, no known witnesses, no known surveillance cameras, no nearby commercial or residential structures.
7. Attacks occurred on secondary rural roads linking major highways with upscale communities.
8. Victims’ vehicles: late-model black Mercedeses, super-luxury class (MSRP range $82,400 to $162,7600).