Madeleine handed the framed article back to Gurney.
He held it carefully, with what he hoped was an appearance of suitable appreciation. The problem was, he didn’t enjoy receiving gifts—especially expensive gifts. He also disliked being the center of attention, was ambivalent about praise, and lacked any sense of nostalgia.
“Thank you,” he said. “What a thoughtful gift.” He frowned at the blue box. “Is this silver frame from where I think it’s from?”
Kyle smiled proudly. “Tiffany has great stuff.”
“Jesus. Well. I don’t know what to say. Thank you. How on earth did you get that old article?”
“I’ve had it pretty much all my life. I’m amazed it didn’t fall apart years ago. I used to show it to all my friends.”
Gurney was blindsided by a surge of emotion. He cleared his throat loudly.
“Here, let me have that,” said Madeleine, taking it from him. “We’ll have to find a nice prominent place for it.”
Kim was watching with fascination. “You don’t like being a hero, do you?”
Gurney’s emotion burst out in the form of rough laughter. “I’m no hero.”
“A lot of people see you that way.”
He shook his head. “Heroes are fictional. They’re invented to serve a purpose in stories. Media storytellers create heroes. And once they create them, they destroy them.”
The observation created an awkward silence.
“Sometimes heroes are real,” said Kyle.
Madeleine had taken the framed article to the far end of the room and was propping it up on the fireplace mantel. “By the way,” she said, “there’s a handwritten inscription on the matte border that I didn’t read out loud before: ‘Happy birthday to the world’s greatest detective.’ ”
There was a sharp knock at the side door, which brought Gurney immediately to his feet. “I’ll get it,” he announced—he hoped not too eagerly. Exchanges of sentiment were not his strong suit, but neither did he want to appear to be in full flight from the generous emotions of others.
The stony pessimism etched into Everett Kramden’s face was, perversely, less upsetting to him than was Kyle’s filial enthusiasm. The man was standing several feet back from the door when Gurney opened it, almost as if some reverse magnetic force had repelled him.
“Sir, may I ask you to step outside for a moment?” It wasn’t really a question.
Gurney complied—surprised by the man’s tone but offering no visible reaction.
“Sir, do you own a five-gallon polyethylene gasoline container?”
“Yes. Two, in fact.”
“I see. And where do you keep them?”
“One over there, for the tractor.” Gurney pointed toward a weathered shed on the far side of the asparagus patch. “And one in the open lean-to structure at the back of the—” He stopped for a second. “I mean, where the back of the barn used to be.”
“I see. Would you please come over to the van now and tell me if this gas container is one of yours?”
Kramden had parked his arson-unit vehicle in back of Gurney’s car. He opened the rear door, and Gurney immediately identified the container inside.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. There’s a visible nick in the handle. No doubt about it.”
Kramden nodded. “When did you last use it?”
“I don’t use it that often. It’s mainly for the weed whacker I keep down there. So … not since last fall.”
“How much gas did you have in it?”
“I have no idea.”
“Where did you last see it?”
“Probably in back of the barn.”
“When did you last touch it?”
“Again, I have no idea. Possibly not since last fall. Possibly more recently, if I had to move it to get to something else. I have no specific recollection.”
“Do you use a two-cycle oil additive in the gas?”
“Yes.”
“What brand?”
“Brand? Homelite, I think.”
“Do you have any idea why the gas container was concealed in a culvert?”
“Concealed? What culvert?”
“Let me rephrase the question. Do you have any idea why this gas container would be anywhere other than at the location where you said you left it?”
“No, I don’t. Where exactly did you find it? What culvert are you talking about?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t share any more detail on that. Is there anything you haven’t told me, relative to the fire or to this investigation, that you wish to tell me at this time?”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Then we’re finished for now. Do you have any other questions, sir?”
“None you’d be willing to answer.”
Two minutes later Investigator Everett Kramden’s van was heading slowly down the town road, out of sight.
The air was perfectly still. There was no hint of movement in the tall, brown grass, nor even in the smallest branches at the tops of the trees. The only sound was that faint, continuous ringing in Gurney’s ears—the sound the neurologist had explained wasn’t really a “sound” at all.
As he turned to go back into the house, the side door opened and Kyle and Kim emerged. “Is the asshole gone?” asked Kyle.
“Appears to be.”
“While Madeleine has the omelets baking, I’m giving Kim a two-minute ride on the bike.” He sounded excited. She looked pleased.
By the time Gurney reached the kitchen, the throaty twin-carbureted engine was in full, minimally muffled roar.
Madeleine was setting the timer on the oven. She looked over at him. “Did you ever see the French movie The Man with the Black Umbrella?”
“I don’t think so.”
“There’s a clever scene in it. A man, dressed in a black raincoat and carrying a folded-up black umbrella, is being followed by a team of assassins with sniper rifles. They’re following him through the winding cobblestone streets of an old town. It’s a misty Sunday morning, and church bells are ringing in the background. Every time the two assassins try to line up the man with the umbrella in the sights of their rifles, he disappears around another corner. Then they come to an open plaza with a big stone church. Just as the assassins are aiming their rifles, the man hurries up the steps and slips into the church. So the assassins decide to take up positions on both sides of the plaza, where they can watch the church doors and wait for him to come out. Some time passes, it starts to rain, the church doors open. The assassins get ready to shoot. But instead of just the man who went in, two men come out, both dressed in black raincoats, and they both open up black umbrellas, so the assassins can’t see their faces clearly. After a couple of seconds of confusion, the assassins decide to shoot both of them. But then another man comes out in a black raincoat with a black umbrella, and then another, and then ten or twenty more, and eventually the whole plaza is full of people under black umbrellas. It becomes rather surreal—the expanding pattern of umbrellas in the plaza. And the assassins are just standing there in the rain, getting soaked, with no idea what to do.”
“How does it end?”
“I don’t remember—I saw it so long ago. All I remember clearly are the umbrellas.” She wiped the countertop with a sponge, then took it to the sink and rinsed it out. “What did he want?”
It took Gurney a second to realize what she was asking. “He found the gas container that I usually keep by the barn. The odd thing is, he found it hidden by the road somewhere.”
“Hidden?”
“That’s what he said. Wanted me to identify it. Doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Why would it be hidden? Did someone use it to start the fire?”
“Maybe. I don’t really know. Investigator Kramden wasn’t very communicative.”
She cocked her head curiously. “The fire obviously was started on purpose. That was no secret, with the pile of No Hunting signs in front of the door, so what would be the point
of hiding—”
“I have no idea. Unless, of course, the arsonist was so drunk that hiding the gas can made some kind of sense to him.”
“You really think that’s the explanation?”
He sighed. “Probably not.”
She gave him one of those probing looks that made him feel transparent. “So,” she said lightly, “what’s the next step?”
“I can’t speak for Kramden. Personally, I have to stare at the available facts for a while, figure out what’s connected to what. There are some basic questions I need to get past.”
“Like deciding whether you’re dealing with one adversary or two?”
“Exactly. In some ways I’d prefer it to be two.”
“Why?”
“Because if the same person is behind the intrusions into Kim’s home and this attack on us, then we’re facing something—and someone—a lot more serious than a resentful hunter.”
The oven timer produced three loud dings. Madeleine ignored the summons. “Someone connected with the Good Shepherd case?”
“Or with Robby Meese—whom I may have underestimated.”
The timer rang again.
Madeleine inclined her head toward the window. “I can hear them coming up the road.”
“What?” The word was less a question than an expression of his irritation at the abrupt change of subject. She didn’t bother to respond. He waited, and after a few seconds he, too, could make out the vintage growl of the BSA.
Forty-five minutes later, after the omelets had been consumed and the table cleared, Gurney was in his den, again reviewing the e-mail documents he’d received from Hardwick—hoping he’d find something significant that he’d missed before.
He postponed looking again at the autopsy photos until he’d gone through everything else. He came close to bypassing what he told himself would be a useless, unpleasant experience—especially since the dreadful images were still so vivid in his mind from his first viewing. But he was finally pushed into it by that obsessive-compulsive gene that had been a plus in his career and a wrecking ball in his personal life.
Perhaps it was because he went through the photos in a different order, or perhaps because his mind at that instant was more receptive … but whatever the reason, he noticed something now he hadn’t noticed the first time. The entry wounds in two of the heads appeared to be in exactly the same place.
He rooted through his desk drawer for an erasable marker, couldn’t find one, went out to the kitchen, finally found one in the sideboard drawer.
“You look like you’re hot on the trail of something,” remarked Kyle. He and Kim were sitting by the fireplace, in armchairs that Gurney noted had been pulled a bit closer together.
He nodded without replying.
Back in the den, on his computer screen, using a credit card as a straightedge, he drew a tight rectangle around one of the two heads that had matching wounds. Then he drew intersecting lines through the middle of the rectangle, connecting its diagonally opposite corners, in order to establish its center point and confirm what he suspected would be the case: The lines crossed over the middle of the entry wound. He hurriedly wiped the screen clean with the sleeve of his shirt and repeated the exercise on the other photo—with the same result.
He called Hardwick and left a message: “Gurney here. Need to ask you a fast question about the autopsy photos. Thanks.”
Then, one by one, he carefully examined the other four photos. When he was on the fourth, Hardwick called back.
“Hey, ace, what’s up?”
“Just wondering about something. In at least two cases that I can verify, the entry wound is dead center on the profile. I can’t tell about the other four, because it appears that those heads might have been in the process of turning toward the side window at the instant of impact. The entry wounds in those may be dead center also, relative to the direction of the shot. But since they aren’t aligned to the autopsy camera at the same angle they were aligned to the gun barrel, I can’t be positive.”
“Not sure I’m getting your point here.”
“I’m wondering if the various MEs took more wound-position and angle measurements than are included in the summaries you sent me. Because if—”
Hardwick interrupted. “Hold it! Hold it right there. Please remember, my boy, whatever data you have in your possession came into your possession some other way. It would be an actionable violation for me to have sent you any official material from the Good Shepherd files. That’s clear, right?”
“Absolutely. Now let me finish. What I’m looking for is a set of numbers that will locate the entry-wound position on each face relative to the position of that face to the side window at the moment of the bullet’s impact.”
“Why?”
“Because two of the photos show shots that struck the precise center of the profile as presented to the shooter. If the victim’s head had been a paper target, the shot in each of those two cases would have been a perfect bull’s-eye. I mean perfect. In lousy conditions, in moving vehicles, with virtually zero visibility.”
“And this means what to you?”
“I’d rather wait until I know about the other four. I’m hoping you might have access to the complete original autopsy notes, or access to someone who does, or that you might know one of the MEs well enough to pose the question.”
“You’d rather wait until I creep around researching the other four for you before you tell me what the point is? I suggest you get to the fucking point now, or the answer I’m seriously contemplating is ‘Fuck you.’ ”
Gurney was accustomed to Hardwick’s manner and never let it get in the way of anything important. “The point,” he replied calmly, “is that accuracy of that degree, firing through the window of a moving vehicle with nothing to illuminate the victim except minimal dashboard light—especially if the shooter managed it in all six instances—means that he has a decent set of night-vision goggles, a very steady hand, and ice water in his veins.”
“So what? Night-vision equipment is available to anyone who wants it. There are a hundred sites on the Internet.”
“That’s not what I’m getting at. My problem is that the more pieces of data I have on the Good Shepherd, the less clear the picture gets. Who the hell is this guy? He’s a super marksman—but he uses a comic-book cannon of a handgun. His manifesto is full of fiery little outbursts of biblical ranting—but his planning is as cool, consistent, and reasonable as it gets. He embarks on an all-consuming mission to kill every greedy person in the world—but he stops at six. His stated objective is insane—but he seems highly intelligent, logical, and risk-averse.”
“Risk-averse?” Hardwick’s rasping voice was even more skeptical than usual. “Racing around unlit roads at night shooting at people doesn’t strike me as risk-averse.”
“But what about the fact that he made every shot on the kind of curve that would minimize the chance of a collision, that he intercepted each victim’s car at the same approximate midpoint of each curve, that he apparently discarded each gun after it was used, that he managed never to be caught on any surveillance camera and never to be seen by any witness? That way of doing things requires thought, time, and money. Jesus, Jack, discarding a pricey Desert Eagle after a single use? That alone looks to me like a very serious investment in risk control.”
Hardwick grunted. “So you’re saying on the one hand we have a Bible-waving drive-by lunatic boiling over with hate for the rich guys who are fucking up the world …”
“… and on the other,” said Gurney, completing the thought, “we have a stone-cold hit man who’s apparently rich enough to toss fifteen-hundred-dollar handguns out the window.”
A prolonged silence suggested that Hardwick was mulling this over. “And you want the autopsy data … to prove what?”
“Not to prove anything. Just to give me some idea of whether I’m on the right track with my sense of contradictions in this case.”
“That’s the whole reaso
n? You know, ace, I’m thinking there might be something else.”
Gurney couldn’t help smiling at Hardwick’s acuity. The man could be—and frequently was—a smirky, abrasive, boorish pain in the ass. But he was far from stupid.
“Yeah, there might be something else. I’ve been poking a sharp little stick at the accepted theory of the Good Shepherd murders. I intend to keep doing that. In the event that some FBI hornets come swarming out at me, I’d like to surround myself with as much data as I can.”
Hardwick’s interest rose a noticeable notch. He had an allergic reaction to authority, to bureaucracy, to procedure, to men in suits and ties—in other words, to organizations like the FBI. Poking a sharp stick in that direction was an activity he would naturally approve of. “You’ve stirred up a little conflict with our fed brothers, have you?” he asked, almost hopefully.
“Not yet,” said Gurney. “But I may be about to.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Hardwick disconnected without saying good-bye, which was not unusual.
Chapter 25
Love and Hate
Gurney was slipping his phone back into his pocket when there was a light knock at the open den door behind him. He turned and saw Kim standing there. “Could I interrupt you for just a minute?”
“Come in. You’re not interrupting anything.”
“I wanted to apologize.”
“For what?
“For taking that ride on the back of Kyle’s motorcycle.”