“No. No partners.”
“I thought … the names … Bickers … and …?”
“That was the name of the firm. Formed as a partnership. I was the senior partner. Then we … we parted ways. The name of the firm was a legal thing … legally independent of who actually worked here. I never had the energy to change it.” He spoke slowly, as though struggling with the unwieldiness of his own words. “Like some divorced women keep their married names. I don’t know why I don’t change it. I should, right?” He didn’t sound as if he wanted an answer.
Kim’s smile became more strained. She shifted in her seat. “Quick question before we go any further. Shall I call you Paul, or would you prefer that I call you Mr. Mellani?”
After several seconds of dead silence, he answered almost inaudibly, “Paul’s okay.”
“Okay, Paul, we’ll get started. As we discussed on the phone, we’re just going to have a simple conversation about your life after the death of your father. Is that all right with you?”
Another pause, and then he said, “Sure.”
“Great. So. How long have you been an accountant?”
“Forever.”
“I mean, specifically, in years?”
“Years? Since college. I’m … forty-five now. Twenty-two when I graduated. So forty-five minus twenty-two equals twenty-three years as an accountant.” He closed his eyes.
“Paul?”
“Yes?”
“Are you all right?”
He opened one eye, then the other. “I agreed to do this, so I’ll do it, but I’d like to get it over with. I’ve been through all this in therapy. I can give you the answers. I just … don’t like listening to the questions.” He sighed. “I read your letter … We talked on the phone … I know what you want. You want before and after, right? Okay. I’ll give you before and after. I’ll give you the gist of the then and the now.” He uttered another small sigh.
Gurney had the momentary impression that they were miners trapped in an underground cave-in, their oxygen supply fading—a scrap of memory from a movie he saw as a child.
Kim frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Mellani repeated, the words heavier the second time around, “I’ve been through all this in therapy.”
“Okay … and … therefore … you …?”
“Therefore I can give you the answers without your having to ask the questions. Better for everyone. Right?”
“Sounds great, Paul. Please, go right ahead.”
He pointed at one of her cameras. “Is that running?”
“Yes.”
Mellani shut his eyes again. By the time he began his narrative, whatever Kim was feeling about the situation was breaking out in tics at the corners of her mouth.
“It’s not like I was a happy person before the … event. I was never a happy person. But there was a time when I had hope. I think I had hope. Something like hope. A sense that the future could be brighter. But after the … event … that feeling was gone forever. The color in the picture got switched off, everything was gray. You understand that? No color. I once had the energy to build a professional practice, to grow something.” He articulated the word as though it were a strange concept. “Clients … partners … momentum. More, better, bigger. Until it happened.” He fell silent.
“It?” prompted Kim.
“The event.” He opened his eyes. “It was like being pushed over the edge of something. Not a cliff, just …” He raised his hand, miming the movement of a car reaching the apex of a hill, then tilting slightly downward. “Things started going south. Falling apart. Bit by bit. The engine wasn’t running anymore.”
“What was your family situation?” asked Kim.
“Situation? Apart from the fact that my father was dead and my mother was in an irreversible coma?”
“I’m sorry, I should have been clearer. What I meant was, were you married, did you have any other family?”
“I had a wife. Until she got tired of everything going downhill.”
“Any children?”
“No. That was a good thing. Or maybe not. All my father’s money went to his grandchildren—my sister’s children.” Mellani produced a smile, but there was bitterness in it. “You know why? This is funny. My sister was a very screwed-up person, very anxious. Both her kids are bipolar, ADHD, OCD, you name it. So my father … he decides that I’m fine, I’m the healthy one in the family, but they need all the help they can get.”
“Are you in contact with your sister?”
“My sister is dead.”
“I’m sorry, Paul.”
“Years ago. Five? Six? Cancer. Maybe dead isn’t so bad.”
“What makes you say that?”
Again the bitter smile, drifting into sadness. “See? Questions. Questions.” He stared down at the tabletop as though he were trying to discern the outlines of something in murky water. “The thing is, money meant a lot to my father. It was the most important thing. You understand?”
His sadness was reflected in Kim’s eyes. “Yes.”
“My therapist told me that my father’s obsession with money was the reason I became an accountant. After all, what do accountants count? They count money.”
“And when he left everything to your sister’s family …?”
Mellani raised his hand again. This time he mimed the slow descent of a car into a deep valley. “Therapy gives you all this insight, all this clarity, but that’s not always a good thing, is it.” It wasn’t a question.
• • •
Emerging from Paul Mellani’s dreary office half an hour later into the sunny parking lot gave Gurney the jarring feeling he got coming out of a dark movie theater into daylight—a shift from one world to another.
Kim took a deep breath. “Wow. That was …”
“Dismal? Desolate? Morose?”
“Just sad.” She looked shaken.
“Did you notice the dates on the magazines in the reception area?”
“No, why?”
“They were all from years ago, nothing current. And speaking of dates, you realize what time of year this is?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the last week of March. Less than three weeks to April fifteenth. These are the weeks every accountant should be crazy busy.”
“Oh, jeez, you’re right. Meaning he has no clients left. Or not very many. So what’s he doing in there?”
“Good question.”
The drive back to Walnut Crossing in their separate cars took nearly two hours. Toward the end the sun was low enough in the sky to produce a hazy glare on Gurney’s dirty windshield—reminding him for the third or fourth time that week that he was out of wiper fluid. What irritated him more than the absence of the fluid was his increasing dependence on notes. If he didn’t write something down …
The ring of his phone interrupted his brooding over the state of his mind. He was surprised to see Hardwick’s name on the screen.
“Yes, Jack?”
“The first one was easy. But don’t think that reduces your debt.”
Gurney thought back to the request he’d made that morning. “The first one being the history of Mr. Meese-Montague?”
“Actually, Mr. Montague-Meese, but more about that anon.”
“Anon?”
“Yeah, anon. It means ‘soon.’ One of William Shakespeare’s favorite words. Whenever he meant ‘soon,’ he said ‘anon.’ I’m expanding my vocabulary so I can speak with greater confidence to intellectual dicks like you.”
“That’s good, Jack. I’m proud of you.”
“Okay, this is a first take. Maybe we’ll have more later. The individual of whom we speak was born March twenty-eighth, 1989, at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City.”
“Huh.”
“What’s the ‘huh’ about?”
“That means he’s about to turn twenty-one.”
“So fucking what?”
“Just an interesting fact. Proceed.??
?
“There is no father’s name indicated on the birth certificate. Little Robert was surrendered for adoption by his mother, whose name, incidentally, was Marie Montague.”
“So little Robert was actually a Montague before he was a Meese. Very interesting.”
“It gets more interesting. He was adopted almost immediately by a prominent Pittsburgh couple, Gordon and Celia Meese. Gordon, it so happens, was filthy rich. Heir to an Appalachian coal-mining fortune. Guess what comes next.”
“The excitement in your voice tells me it’s something horrible.”
“At the age of twelve, Robert was removed from the Meese home by Child Protective Services.”
“Were you able to find out why?”
“No. Believe me, that is one seriously sealed case file.”
“Why am I not surprised? What happened to Robert after that?”
“Ugly story. One foster home after another. No one willing to keep him for more than six months. Difficult young man. Has been prescribed various drugs for a generalized anxiety disorder, borderlinepersonality disorder, intermittent-explosive disorder—gotta love that one.”
“I guess I shouldn’t ask how you got access to—”
“Right. So don’t. Bottom line, it adds up to a very insecure kid with a shaky grip on reality and a major anger problem.”
“Then how did this paragon of stability—”
“End up at the university? Simple. Right in the center of that screwed-up mind there lurks a sky-high IQ. And a sky-high IQ, combined with a troubled background, combined with zero financial resources, is the magic formula for a full college scholarship. Since entering the university, Robert has excelled in drama and has earned fair to lousy marks in everything else. He is said to be a natural-born actor. Movie-star handsome, fantastic onstage, able to turn on the charm, but basically secretive. He recently changed his name back from Meese to Montague. For a few months, he cohabited, as you may know, with little Kimmy. Apparently that ended badly. Currently lives alone in a three-room rental in a subdivided Victorian house on a nice street in Syracuse. Sources of income for rent, car, and other nonuniversity expenses are unknown.”
“Any employment?”
“Nothing obvious. That’s the story for now. If more shit turns up, I’ll drop it on you.”
“I owe you.”
“You got that right.”
Gurney’s mind was swimming with so many free-floating facts that when Madeleine commented that evening over coffee on the spectacular sunset that had occurred an hour earlier, he had no recollection of having seen it. In its place was a mass of disquieting images, personalities, details.
The Humpty-Dumpty cookie baker, not wanting to think of his all-powerful mother as a “victim.” The mother who “ruffled feathers, stepped on toes.” Gurney wondered if the man was ever told about her earlobe on the sumac bush, the earlobe with the diamond stud in it.
Paul Mellani, a man whose rich father gave all his money, therefore all his love, to someone else. A man whose career had lost its meaning, whose life had turned gray, whose thoughts were grim and sour—and whose language, demeanor, and lifeless office were the equivalent of a suicide note.
Jesus … suppose …
Madeleine was watching him across the table. “What’s the matter?”
“I was just thinking about one of the people Kim and I visited today.”
“Go on.”
“I’m trying to go back over what he said. He sounded … pretty depressed.”
Madeleine’s gaze grew more intense. “What did he say?”
“That’s what I’m trying to remember. The thing that comes to mind was a comment he made. He’d just told us his sister was dead. Then he said, ‘Dead isn’t so bad.’ Something like that.”
“Nothing more direct? No expression of any intention to do anything?”
“No. Just … a heaviness, a … lack of … I don’t know.”
Madeleine looked anguished.
“The guy at your clinic, the patient who killed himself? Was he specific about …?”
“No, of course not, or he would have been taken to a psych ward. But he definitely had that … heaviness. A darkness, a hopelessness.”
Gurney sighed. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter what we think someone may do. It only matters what people say they’re going to do.” He frowned. “But there’s something I’d like to find out. Just for my own peace of mind.” He got his cell phone from the sideboard and entered Hardwick’s number. The call went to voice mail.
“Jack, I want to increase my enormous indebtedness to you by asking for one more tiny favor. There’s an accountant down in Orange County by the name of Paul Mellani. Happens to be the son of Bruno Mellani, the first Good Shepherd victim. I’d like to know if he has any guns registered. I have a concern about him, and I’d like to know how much I should worry. Thanks.”
He sat back down at the table and absently put a third spoon of sugar in his coffee.
“The sweeter the better?” asked Madeleine with a small smile.
He shrugged, stirring the coffee slowly.
She cocked her head a little to one side and studied him in a way that had once made him uneasy but in recent years he’d come to welcome—not because he understood what she was thinking, or what conclusions her “study” produced, but because he saw it as an expression of affection. To ask her what was on her mind would be like demanding that she define their relationship. But the part of any relationship that made it precious was not something that could be defined on demand.
She raised her cup to her lips with two hands, sipped from it, and put it down gently. “So … do you want to tell me a bit more about what’s going on?”
For some reason the question took him by surprise. “You really want to know?”
“Of course.”
“There’s a lot.”
“I’m listening.”
“Okay. Remember, you asked for it.” He leaned back in his chair and spoke with hardly a pause for twenty-five minutes, recounting everything that came to mind—from Roberta Rotker’s firing range to the skeleton at Max Clinter’s gate—with no effort to organize, prioritize, or edit the data. As he went on, he himself was struck by the sheer number of intense people, weird tangents, and sinister complexities in the affair. “And finally,” he concluded, “there’s the matter of the barn.”
“Yes, the barn,” said Madeleine, her expression hardening. “You believe it’s connected with everything else?”
“I think it is.”
“So what’s the plan?”
It was an unwelcome question, because it forced him to face the fact that his intentions didn’t add up to anything remotely like a plan. “Poke around in the shadows with a cattle prod, see if anyone yells,” he said. “Maybe light a fire under the sacred cow.”
“Can any of that be expressed in English?”
“I want to find out if anyone in official law enforcement actually has any solid facts, or if the sanctified theory of the Good Shepherd case is as fragile as I think it is.”
“That’s what you’re doing tomorrow with the fish guy?”
“Yes. Agent Trout. At his cabin in the Adirondacks. On Lake Sorrow.”
Just then Kyle and Kim came in the side door, accompanied by a rush of chilly air.
Chapter 28
Darker, Colder, Deeper
At dawn the next morning, Gurney was back at the table with his first coffee of the day. Sitting by the French doors, he was watching a daddy longlegs dragging a captured earwig along the edge of the stone patio. The earwig was still putting up a fight.
For a moment Gurney was tempted to intervene—until he realized that his impulse was neither kind nor empathetic. It was nothing more than a desire to brush the struggle out of sight.
“What’s the matter?” It was Madeleine’s voice.
He looked up with a start to find her in a pink T-shirt and green madras shorts, fresh from her shower, standing next to him.<
br />
“Just observing the horrors of nature,” he said.
She looked out through the glass doors at the eastern sky. “It’s going to be a nice day.”
He nodded without really hearing her. Another thought had absorbed his attention. “Before I went to bed last night, Kyle said something about going back to Manhattan this morning. Do you recall if he mentioned what time he was planning to leave?”
“They left an hour ago.”
“What?”
“They left an hour ago. You were sound asleep. They didn’t want to wake you.”
“They?”
Madeleine gave him a look that seemed to convey her surprise at his surprise. “Kim has to be in the city this afternoon to record something for The Orphans of Murder. Kyle persuaded her to go down early with him, so they could spend the day doing things together. She didn’t appear to need much persuading. In fact, I think the plan is for her to stay over at his apartment tonight. I can’t believe you didn’t see this coming.”
“Maybe I did, but not so fast.”
Madeleine went to the coffeemaker on the sink island and poured herself a cup. “Does it worry you?”
“Unknowns worry me. Surprises worry me.”
She took a sip and returned to the table. “Unfortunately, life is full of them.”
“So I’ve discovered.”
She stood by the table, gazing through the far window toward the widening swath of light above the ridge. “Does Kim worry you?”
“To some extent. I wonder about the Robby Meese thing. I mean, that guy is pretty warped, and she let him move in with her. There’s something wrong with that picture.”
“I agree, but maybe not the way you mean it. A lot of people, mostly women, are attracted to damaged individuals. The more damage, the better. They get involved with criminals, drug addicts. They want to fix somebody. It’s a horrible basis for a relationship, but not that unusual. I see it every day at the clinic. Maybe that’s what was going on with Kim and Robby Meese—until she found the strength and sanity to get him out of her life.”
With his detailed route directions in hand, Gurney left shortly after sunrise for Lake Sorrow. The drive through the Catskill foothills and rolling Schoharie farmlands up into the Adirondacks was a journey into discomfiting memories. Memories of preteen vacations at Brant Lake with his mother at the height of her emotional estrangement from his father. An estrangement that left her needy, anxious, and physically clingy. Even now, close to forty years later, the memories cast an unsettling pall.