“Jeez. How’d you figure that out?”
“The card gave me the idea. Here’s what I want you to do. When you get to the apartment, go down in the basement—assuming the lights are working and there are no new signs of intrusions. Look around in the vicinity of the staircase for places where something the size of a fifty-cent piece could be concealed. Somewhere near the bottom of the stairs. The voice I heard was definitely within a few feet of where I fell.”
“How concealed could it be? I mean, for the sound to be clear …”
“You’re right—it couldn’t be completely buried in the wall, but it could be in a shallow recess of some kind, maybe covered with paper or a painted fabric to blend in with the wall—something like that.”
“Not in the floor, though, right?”
“No, the voice came from somewhere above me—as though someone were bending over me.”
“Could it be in the staircase itself?”
“Could be, yes.”
“Okay. Wow. We’ll get going. I’ll call you as soon as we get there.”
“Don’t speed. Half an hour one way or the other won’t make any difference.”
“Right.” There was a pause. “So … did you like the card?”
“What? Oh, yes. Yes, absolutely. Thank you.”
“You recognized the ‘Spring’ thing?”
“Of course I did.”
“Okay. Great. Call you in a little while.”
To prevent “the ‘Spring’ thing” and its memories from pulling him into an emotional morass, Gurney searched for something to do until he heard back from Kyle.
He went to the file cabinet in the den, got the phone number of their local insurance broker, and made the call. After several branching options, the automated answering system gave him another number to call “to report an accident, fire, or other loss covered by your homeowners policy.”
As he was about the enter the new number, the phone rang in his hand. He glanced at the ID screen, saw that it was Hardwick. He debated the choice for about three seconds and decided the insurance call could wait.
The instant he pressed TALK, Hardwick started speaking.
“Shit, Gurney, everything you ask for is a pain in the ass, you realize that?”
“I figure your lazy ass needs the exercise.”
“I need this like I need a vegan diet.”
“What do you have for me, besides bullshit?”
Hardwick cleared his throat with his customary thoroughness. “Most of the original autopsy notes are buried deeper than I can get to today. Like I said, this is a giant—”
“I know what you said, Jack. The question is what do you have?”
“You remember Wally Thrasher?”
“The ME on the Mellery case?”
“The very one. Arrogant, wise-ass bastard.”
“Like someone I know.”
“Fuck you. Among his other fine qualities, Wally is obsessively-compulsively organized. And it just so happens that he did the autopsy on the big, flashy real-estate lady.”
“Sharon Stone?”
“The very one.”
“And?”
“Bull’s-eye.”
“You mean—”
“Entry wound was dead center in the side of her head. I mean, dead fucking center. Course, the exit wound was a whole other thing. Hard to find the center of something when there’s nothing left to find the center of.”
“It’s the entry wound that matters.”
“Right. So now you have the two bull’s-eyes you already knew about, plus one more. You think that’s good enough to prove whatever brilliant point you want to prove?”
“It just might be. I appreciate the input.”
“I exist only to serve.”
The connection was broken.
Chapter 26
An Explosion of Threats
Gurney was energized by the wound data, even though he wasn’t sure yet what its full implications might be or how he might use it in his Sunday meeting with Trout. But his thoughts seemed to be moving faster now, as though he’d had a double espresso, and he turned quickly to a new question.
He placed another call to Kyle, but this time got his voice mail. Apparently the motorcycle was back on the road.
“As soon as you get this message, I want you to find out from Kim how many people are aware of the bedtime story. Not people who just know about it in a general way but who know the details, especially the line ‘Let the devil sleep.’ If there are more than two or three, ask her to make a list of the names, any addresses she might have, and the nature of her relationships with them. Thanks. Be careful. Talk to you soon.”
As soon as he ended the call, a whole new issue came to mind. He reentered the number and left a second message: “Sorry for the multiple requests, but something else just occurred to me. After you check for that mini–playback thing in the basement, do a quick look-around for listening devices—electronic bugs. Check the most likely places—smoke alarms, surge protectors, night-lights. What you’re looking for is anything in the innards of those items that seems like it might not belong there. If you find something, don’t remove it. Leave it where it is. That’s it for now. Call me as soon as you can.”
The idea that Kim’s apartment might be bugged—might have been bugged for God knows how long—raised a whole chain of perplexing questions with potentially disturbing answers. He got his copy of Kim’s project folder out of the desk drawer and settled down on the den couch to go through it one more time.
Halfway through it, his energy spike began to decline as rapidly as it had risen. He told himself he’d close his eyes for five minutes. Ten at the most. He leaned back into the soft couch pillows. It had been a uniquely stressful and draining couple of days, with hardly any sleep at all.
A short nap …
He awoke with a start. Something was ringing, but for a moment he didn’t know what. As he started to get up, he discovered a stabbing pain in his neck, stiff from the sideways position of his head.
The ringing stopped, and he heard Madeleine’s voice.
“He’s asleep.” And then, “When I got home half an hour ago, he was totally unconscious.” And then, “Let me go in and see.”
She came into the den. Gurney was sitting up now, his feet on the floor, rubbing the blurriness out of his eyes.
“You’re awake?”
“Sort of.”
“Can you talk to Kyle?”
“Where is he?”
“At Kim’s apartment. He says he’s been trying to get you on your cell.”
“What time is it?”
“Close to seven.”
“Seven? Jesus!”
“He seems very eager to tell you something.”
Gurney opened his eyes wider, stood up from the couch.
She pointed to the landline phone on the desk. “You can take the call there. I’ll hang up the extension in the kitchen.”
Gurney picked up the handset. “I’m here.”
“Hey, Dad! Been trying to get you for the past two hours. You okay?”
“Fine, just exhausted.”
“Yeah, I forgot, it’s been like days since you got any sleep.”
“You discover anything interesting?”
“More like weird. Where do you want me to start?”
“In the basement.”
“Okay. In the basement. You know the long boards on each side of the staircase that the steps are set into? Well, I found a narrow slot cut into the bottom of one of them about two feet above the step that’s missing, and there’s this thing in the slot about half the size of one of those USB thumb drives for your computer.”
“You removed it?”
“You said to leave it. I just kind of edged it out with the tip of a knife to see how big it was. But here’s the weird part. When I pushed it back into the slot, I must have reset something, because about ten seconds later this really spooky whisper came out of it. Like some maniac in a horror movie
hissing the words through his teeth. ‘Let the devil sleep.’ I swear I almost pissed in my pants. I think I actually did piss in my pants.”
“How obvious was this slot in the board?”
“Not obvious at all. It was like the guy had taken a plane and made a tiny wood shaving to cover the hole.”
“So how did you—”
“You said it would be within a few feet of where you fell. Not a big area. I just kept looking till I found it.”
“Did you ask Kim who else knows about the bedtime story?”
“She insists the only person she ever told was her crazy ex. Of course, the crazy ex could have told other people.”
There was a silence, during which Gurney tried once again to draw together the disparate pieces of the case, which kept flying off in as many directions as there were pieces. And what case was he talking about anyway? The cold case of the six roadway murders, tied together by the manifesto of the Good Shepherd? The case of Kim Corazon’s alleged harassment by Robby Meese, escalating into vandalism and reckless endangerment? The arson case? Or some hypothetical master case in which all these events were intertwined—perhaps even connected to the falling arrow in the garden?
“Dad, you still there?”
“Sure.”
“There’s more. I haven’t told you the nastiest news,” said Kyle.
“Jesus. What is it?”
“Every room in Kim’s apartment is bugged, even the bathroom.”
Gurney felt a small frisson rise up the back of his neck. “What did you find?”
“In your phone message you mentioned the obvious places to look? The first place I checked was the smoke alarm in the living room, because I know what the inside of a smoke alarm is supposed to look like. And I found something that clearly doesn’t belong there. Not much bigger than a pack of matches with a fine wire sticking out of the end. Figured it was some kind of aerial.”
“Was there anything resembling a lens?”
“No.”
“It could be as small as half a grain of—”
“No, believe me, no lens. I thought about that, and I checked.”
“Okay,” said Gurney, absorbing the significance of this. The absence of video capability meant that the device wasn’t part of the police’s promised surveillance equipment. To identify an intruder, you planted a camera, not an audio bug. “Then you checked the other smoke alarms?”
“One in every room, and every one of them has one of those things in it.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Outside. On the sidewalk.”
“Good thinking. Am I getting the impression you have more to tell me?”
“Did you know there’s an access panel that leads to the apartment upstairs?”
“No. But I’m not surprised. Where is it?”
“In the laundry alcove off the kitchen.”
Gurney recalled the kitchen and the laundry area as both having a ceiling pattern of large squares formed by intersecting strips of decorative molding—ideal for concealing a movable panel.
“What on earth prompted you to—”
“Check the ceilings? Kim told me sometimes she hears noises at night, creaking, other creepy little sounds. And she told me about all that other odd shit—things being moved, things missing and reappearing, the bloodstains—even though she’d had her locks changed. Plus the fact that the apartment upstairs is supposed to be vacant. So when you put all that together …”
“Very good,” said Gurney, impressed. “You figured the most likely access to her apartment would be through the ceiling?”
“And the most likely ceiling would be the one with the panel moldings.”
“Then what?”
“Then I got a ladder from the basement and started pressing on each square until I found one that felt a little different, had a different kind of give. I got a knife and loosened the molding around it, enough to see that there were cut lines underneath. I didn’t go any further. If you didn’t want me to move the bugs, I didn’t think you’d want me to move the panel. Besides, it was secured from the other side, and I’d have to break it to get through it, which I didn’t want to do, not knowing what might be up there.”
Gurney noted the eagerness of the chase in his son’s voice, tempered with barely enough caution. “You’ve had a busy afternoon.”
“Got to catch the bad guys. What’s the next step?”
“Your next step should be to get the hell out of there and come back here—both of you. My next step is to let these new facts sink in for a while. Sometimes when I go to bed with questions, I wake up with answers.”
“Is that true?”
“No, but it sounds good.”
Kyle laughed. “What questions are you going to bed with tonight?”
“Let me ask you the same thing. After all, you’re the one who made the discoveries. Being on-site creates a better perspective. What do you think the big questions are?”
Even in Kyle’s hesitation, Gurney could sense a palpable excitement. “As far as I can see, there’s one really big one.”
“Namely?”
“Are we dealing with an obsessed stalker or with something a whole lot nastier?” He paused. “What do you think?”
“I’m thinking that we might be dealing with both.”
Chapter 27
Conflicting Reactions
Gurney stayed up that night until Kim and Kyle arrived from Syracuse—Kyle on his BSA and Kim in her Miata.
After they’d reviewed everything they’d discussed on the phone, Gurney had two more questions. The first was for Kyle, and he got only half of it out before it was answered. “When you took off the covers of the smoke alarms—”
“I took them off very quietly, very slowly. All the while Kim and I kept talking about something completely different—about one of her courses at school—so no one listening would realize what I was doing.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. I saw it in a spy movie.”
Gurney’s second question was for Kim. “Did you see anything in the apartment that wasn’t familiar—any kind of small appliance, clock radio, iPod, stuffed animal, anything at all you hadn’t seen before?”
“No, why?”
“Just wondering if Schiff ever got around to bringing in the promised video-surveillance equipment. In situations where the apartment renter is aware of the plan, it’s easier to bring in a video transmitter that’s prewired inside its cover object rather than concealing it in a ceiling fixture or something else on site.”
“There wasn’t anything like that.”
The next morning at the breakfast table, Gurney noticed that Madeleine had skipped her usual bowl of oatmeal and had hardly touched her coffee. Her gaze out through the glass doors seemed focused on dark thoughts rather than on the sunny landscape.
“You thinking about the fire?”
It took her so long to answer that he began to think she hadn’t heard him. “Yes, I suppose you could say I’m thinking about the fire. When I woke up this morning, you know what came into my mind, for maybe three seconds? I had the idea of enjoying this lovely morning by taking a ride on my bicycle along the back road by the river. But then, of course, I realized I don’t have a bicycle. That charred, twisted thing on the barn floor isn’t really a bicycle anymore, is it?”
Gurney didn’t know what to say.
She sat silently for a while, her eyes narrowed in anger. Then she said, more to her coffee cup than to him, “This person who’s been bugging Kim’s apartment—how much do you think he’s learned about us?”
“Us?”
“You, then. How much do you think he’s found out about you?”
Gurney took a deep breath. “Good question.” It was, in fact, a question that had been gnawing at him since his phone conversation with Kyle the previous evening. “Presumably the bugs are transmitting to a voice-activated recording device—giving him access to the conversations I had with Kim on my v
isits there, plus her side of all her cell-phone conversations.”
“Conversations she had with you, with her mother, with Rudy Getz …”
“Yes.”
Madeleine’s eyes narrowed. “So he knows a lot.”
“He knows a lot.”
“Should we be afraid?”
“We need to be vigilant. And I need to figure out what the hell is going on.”
“Ah. I see. I keep my eyes open for a potential maniac while you play with the puzzle pieces? Is that the plan?”
“Am I interrupting something?” Kim was standing at the kitchen door.
Madeleine looked like she was about to say, Yes, you are definitely interrupting something.
Instead Gurney asked, “You want some coffee?”
“No, thanks. I … I just wanted to remind you … we need to leave in about an hour for our first appointment. It’s with Eric Stone in Barkham Dell. He still lives in his mother’s house. You’ll love meeting this one. Eric is … unique.”
Before they left, Gurney made his planned call to Detective James Schiff at Syracuse PD to ask about the surveillance equipment for Kim’s apartment. Schiff was out on a call, and Gurney was transferred to Schiff’s partner, Elwood Gates, who seemed familiar with the situation. Gates was, however, neither very interested in the problem nor apologetic for the delay in installing the promised cameras.
“If Schiff said we’ll get to it, then we’ll get to it.”
“Any idea when?”
“Maybe when we’re done with a few higher-priority things, okay?”
“Higher priority than a dangerous nutcase making repeated intrusions into a young woman’s apartment, with the intention of inflicting serious bodily harm?”
“You talking about the broken step?”
“I’m talking about a booby-trapped staircase over a concrete floor, designed to create a potentially fatal injury.”
“Well, Mr. Gurney, let me tell you something. Right now there’s nothing ‘potential’ about the fatal injuries we’re dealing with. I guess you didn’t hear about the little crack-dealer turf war that erupted here yesterday? No, I didn’t think so. But your giant trespassing problem is right up there at the top of our list—just as soon as we shut down about a dozen crazy scumbags with AK-47s. Okay? We’ll be sure to keep you informed. You have a nice day.”