“How did you get through it?”
“The main thing was the others.”
“The others?”
“The support we were able to give each other. We’d each lost a loved one the same way. We had that in common.”
“You formed a support group?”
“For a while we were like family. Closer than some families. Everybody was different, but we had that one strong bond. I remember Paul, the accountant, so quiet, hardly ever said anything. Roberta, the tough one, tougher than any man. Dr. Sterne, he was the voice of reason, the one who had a way of calming people down. There was the young man who wanted to open a fancy restaurant. And who else? Oh, Lord, Jimi. How could I ever forget Jimi? Jimi Brewster hated everyone and everything. I often wonder what happened to him.”
“I found him,” said Kim, “and he agreed to speak to me. He’s going to be part of this.”
“Good for him. Poor Jimi. So much anger. You know what they say about people who are that angry?”
“What?”
“That they’re angry at themselves.”
Kim let a long silence pass before asking, “How about you, Ruth? Aren’t you angry about what happened?”
“Sometimes. Mostly I’m sad. Mostly …” Tears started coming down her cheeks.
The video interview segment faded to black, and then the scene cut back to the studio, to a shot of the host at the table with Kim. Gurney assumed that this was the interview segment she’d gone to the city that day to record.
“I don’t know what to say,” said the host. “I’m speechless, Kim. That was so powerful.”
She looked down at the table with an embarrassed smile. “So powerful,” he repeated. “I want to talk more about that in just a minute, Kim, but first I want to ask you something.”
He leaned in her direction, lowering his voice in an imitation of confidentiality. “Is it true that you’ve gotten a highly decorated homicide detective involved in this documentary project? Dave Gurney. The man New York magazine once called ‘Supercop’?”
A gunshot couldn’t have grabbed Gurney’s attention more completely. He studied Kim’s face on the screen. She looked startled.
“Sort of,” she said after a pause. “I mean, he’s been advising me on some issues surrounding the case.”
“Issues? Can you give us any details?”
Kim’s hesitation convinced Gurney that she’d truly been caught off guard. “Odd things have been happening, things I’d rather not reveal yet. But it looks as if someone might be trying to stop The Orphans of Murder from being shown.”
The host affected intense concern. “Go on …”
“Well … things have happened to us, things that could be interpreted as warnings to back off, to stay away from the Good Shepherd case.”
“And does your detective adviser have any theories?”
“He seems to have a view of the case that’s different from everyone else’s.”
The host seemed riveted. “Are you saying that your police expert thinks the FBI has been on the wrong track all these years?”
“You’ll have to ask him that yourself. I’ve already said too much.”
Goddamn right, thought Gurney.
“If it’s the truth, Kim, it’s never too much! Maybe I’ll follow up with Detective Gurney himself—in time for next week’s installment of The Orphans of Murder. In the meantime I invite our viewers to speak out. React! Share your thoughts with us. Go to our website and speak your mind.”
The Web address—RAM4NEWS.COM—appeared at the bottom of the screen in flashing red and blue letters.
The host leaned toward Kim. “We have one minute left. Can you sum up the essence of the Good Shepherd case in a few words?”
“In a few words?”
“Right. The essence of it.”
She closed her eyes. “Love. Loss. Pain.”
The camera zoomed in to a close-up of the host. “All right, folks. There you have it. Love, loss, and terrible pain. Next week we’ll take a close look at the shattered family of another Good Shepherd victim. And remember, as far as we know, the Good Shepherd is still out there, still walking among us. A man … to whom … human life … means nothing. Stay tuned to RAM News for everything you need to know. Stay alert, my friends. It’s a dangerous world.”
The screen faded to black.
Gurney closed the browser, put the computer to sleep, and sat back in his chair.
Madeleine gave him a gently appraising look. “What’s worrying you?”
“Right this minute? I don’t know.” He shifted in his chair, closed his eyes, and waited for the first troubling object to surface. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the show they’d just watched—as disturbing as it was. “What do you think about this thing with Kim and Kyle?” he said.
“They seem to be attracted to each other. What’s there to think about?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“What Kim said about you at the end of that RAM thing—your doubts about the FBI approach—will that make trouble for you?”
“It could ratchet up the unpleasantness with Agent Trout. Possibly tweak his control-freak nerves to the point of wanting to create some legal inconvenience for me.”
“Is there anything you can do about that? Any way to head it off?”
“Sure. All I have to do is prove that his case is total nonsense. At which point he’ll have bigger problems to worry about than me.”
Chapter 31
The Return of the Shepherd
When Gurney awoke the following morning at seven-thirty, it was raining. It was the kind of light but steady rain that can go on for hours.
As usual, both windows were open a few inches from the top. The air in the bedroom was chilly and damp. Although it was officially almost an hour past sunrise, the skewed rectangle of sky visible from the position of his head on the pillow was the unpromising gray of a wet flagstone.
Madeleine was up before him. He stretched and rubbed his eyes. He had no desire to go back to sleep. His last dream, an uneasy one, had involved a black umbrella. As the umbrella opened, seemingly of its own volition, its unfolding fabric became the wings of an enormous bat. The bat shape-shifted into a black vulture, the curved umbrella handle sharpening into a hooked beak. And then, through the exotic sensory logic of dreams, the vulture was transformed into the cool draft from the open windows—the unpleasant touch of which had been the cause of his awakening.
He pushed himself out of bed, as a way of putting distance between himself and the dream. Then he took a hot shower for its mind-clearing and reality-simplifying benefits, shaved, brushed his teeth, dressed, and went out to the kitchen for coffee.
“Call Jack Hardwick,” said Madeleine from the stove, without looking up, as she added a handful of raisins to something she was simmering in a small pot.
“Why?”
“Because he called here about fifteen minutes ago and wanted to talk to you.”
“Did he say what he wanted?”
“Said he had a question about your e-mail.”
“Hmm.” He went to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup. “I was dreaming about a black umbrella.”
“He seemed very eager to talk to you.”
“I’ll call him. But … tell me, how did that movie end?”
Madeleine emptied the little pot into her bowl and brought it to the breakfast table. “I don’t remember.”
“You described that scene in great detail—the guy the snipers were following, how he went into the church, and later, when he came out, they couldn’t tell who he was because everyone else coming out of the church with him was dressed in black and had a black umbrella. What happened after that?”
“I guess he got away. Because the snipers couldn’t shoot everybody.”
“Hmm.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Suppose they did shoot everybody.”
“They didn’t.”
“But suppose they did. Su
ppose they shot everybody, because that was the only way they could make sure they got the one they were after. And suppose the police arrived later and found all those bodies, all those people who’d been shot dead in the street. What would they think?”
“What would the police think? I have no idea. Maybe that some maniac wanted to kill churchgoers?”
Gurney nodded. “Exactly—especially if they got a letter the same day from someone claiming that religious people were the scum of the earth and he was planning to kill them all.”
“But … wait a minute.” Madeleine looked incredulous. “Are you suggesting that the Good Shepherd killed all those people because he couldn’t tell who his real target was? And that he just kept shooting people in a certain kind of car, until he was sure he got the person he was after?”
“I don’t know. But I intend to figure it out.”
Madeleine shook her head. “I just don’t see how—” She was interrupted by the ring of the landline phone on the countertop next to the refrigerator. “You’d better get that. It’s probably you-know-who.”
He did. And it was.
“You out of that fucking shower yet?”
“Good morning, Jack.”
“Got your e-mail—your investigatory premise, along with your list of questions.”
“And?”
“You’re making the point that there’s a style conflict between the manifesto’s words and the shooter’s deeds?”
“You could put it that way.”
“You’re saying that the shooter’s MO proves he’s way too practical, way too cool, calm, and collected to think the thoughts presented in the manifesto. My little brain got that right?”
“What I’m saying is, there’s a disconnect.”
“Okay. That’s interesting. But it creates a bigger problem than it solves.”
“How?”
“You’re saying the motive for the murders is something other than what’s spelled out in the manifesto.”
“Right.”
“Therefore the victims were chosen for another reason—not because they were conspicuous displayers of luxury goods, greedy bastards who deserved to die?”
“Right.”
“So this super-practical, super-cool genius had an undisclosed pragmatic reason for killing those people?”
“Right.”
“You see the problem?”
“Tell me.”
“If the shooter’s real motive for choosing each victim was something other than the fact that he—or she—was driving a hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes, then we have to believe that driving a hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes was irrelevant. A fucking coincidence. You ever run into anything like that, Davey boy? It would be like discovering that every victim of Bernie Madoff just happened to have a leprechaun tattooed on his ass. You get my point here?”
“I get it, Jack. Anything else in my e-mail bothering you?”
“Matter of fact, yes—another one of your questions. Actually, three questions that all kind of circle around the same issue: Were all the murders equally important? Was the sequence important? Were any of them necessitated by any of the others? You want to tell me, what is it about the case that brings up that issue?”
“Sometimes it’s what’s missing that gets my attention. And because of the nature of the reigning hypothesis in this particular case, there’s a hell of a lot missing—unexplored avenues, unasked questions. The basic assumption from the beginning was that these murders were identical components of a philosophical statement the killer was making. As soon as everyone accepted that, no one looked at them as individual events that could have different purposes. But it’s possible the murders were not all equally important, or even all done for the same reason. You with me, Jack?”
“Hard to say. You got any specifics?”
“You ever see a movie called The Man with the Black Umbrella?”
He’d never seen it, never even heard of it. So Gurney told him the story, ending with the “what if the snipers shot them all?” speculation he’d raised with Madeleine.
After a long silence, Hardwick asked a variant of one of Madeleine’s questions. “You’re saying that the first five attacks were mistakes? And the shooter finally got lucky with the sixth? Help me understand this. I mean, if he was a professional, like the guys in your movie, what target ID was he given? Just that the target drove a top-of-the-line Mercedes? So he ought to drive around at night, shoot through a few Mercedes windows with the biggest fucking gun on earth, and see who he hits? I’m having trouble with this.”
“Me, too. But you know what? I’m starting to get the feeling that I might be in the right ballpark, even though I’m not sure yet what the game is.”
“Not sure? How about not having a fucking clue what it is?”
“You need to think more positively.”
“You have any more words of wisdom, Sherlock, before I puke?”
“Just one thing. Special Agent Trout is fixated on the fact that I might have access to privileged information I’m not legally entitled to. Watch your back, Jack.”
“Fuck Trout. Is there any other secret shit you want me to shovel your way?”
“Long as you’re asking, do you have any tracer progress on Emilio Corazon?”
“Not yet. He’s managed to become a surprisingly invisible man.”
At eight forty-five, Madeleine left for her part-time job at the clinic. It was still raining. Gurney went to his computer, brought up a copy of his e-mail to Hardwick, and went over the list of questions he’d included—stopping at the one that read, “Why did the murders occur when they did, in the spring of the year 2000?” The more certain he was that the murders were essentially pragmatic, the more significant the timing element became.
Psycho-mission killings usually took one of two forms: There’s the Big Bang approach, where the shooter walks into the midst of multiple targets in the post office or the mosque and starts shooting, with no plan of escape. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, those guys (and they’re always guys) end up shooting themselves when there’s no one else left to shoot. Then there’s the other type—the guys who dribble out their bile for ten or twenty years. The guys who like to blow off somebody’s head or hand with a letter bomb every year or two but aren’t so eager to kill themselves.
The Good Shepherd murders didn’t seem to fit either category. There was a palpable coolness, a lack of emotion, in their crisp planning and execution. In any event that’s what Gurney was telling himself when the phone rang at nine-fifteen.
Once again it was Hardwick, but his tone was heavier than before.
“Whatever game is being played in whatever ballpark, it just got nastier. Ruthie Blum has turned up dead.”
Gurney’s first thought, one that made him instantly nauseous, was that she’d been shot in the head like her husband ten years earlier. The sickening image that leaped into his mind was of her perky Yorkshire-terrier hairdo blasted into a bloody, brainy mess.
“Oh, God, no. Where? How?”
“In her house. Ice pick to the heart.”
“What?”
“You expressing surprise or bad hearing?”
“An ice pick?”
“Single thrust, upward, under the sternum.”
“Jesus Christ. When?”
“Sometime after eleven last night.”
“How do they know that?”
“She posted a Facebook message at ten fifty-eight. Body was found at three-forty this morning.”
“This is the same house where she lived ten years ago when—”
“Right. Same house. Also the same house where little Kimmy interviewed her for that thing on RAM-TV.”
Gurney’s mind was racing. “Who found her?”
“Troopers out of the Auburn station in Zone E. Long story. Friend of Ruth’s from Ithaca, up late, read her Facebook message. Found it disturbing. Responded to it on Facebook, asking Ruthie if she was all right. Got no answer back. E-mailed her, got no
answer to that either. Started phoning her, no answer, only voice mail. So the friend gets panicky, calls the local cops, gets passed on to the sheriff’s office, eventually gets passed on to Auburn. Auburn contacts a cruiser in the vicinity. Trooper comes by the house, everything looks peaceful, no problem, no signs of any disturbance, no—”
“Wait a second. You have any idea what Ruth Blum’s original message said that started all this?”
“I just e-mailed it to you.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Andy Clegg.”
“Who the hell is Andy Clegg?”
“Young guy up in E Zone. You don’t remember him?”
“Should I?”
“The Piggert case.”
“Okay. Now the name rings a bell. But I can’t picture a face.”
“His first assignment out of the academy—in fact, the first job he caught on his first day on the job—was to respond to my call for support when I found my half of Mrs. Piggert’s body. That turned out to be Andy’s first official vomit opportunity. And he took full advantage of it.”
The infamous Peter Piggert incest-murder case was the beginning of the edgy but productive relationship between Hardwick and Gurney. Gurney was at the NYPD then, and Hardwick was with the NYSP. They were each investigating aspects of the Piggert case that fell within their separate jurisdictions, when a grotesque bit of serendipity brought them together. Over a hundred miles apart, on the same day, they each discovered half of the same body.
“Young Andy Clegg met us both at a joint get-together after you nailed the elusive Mr. Piggert, the mother-fucking mother killer. Andy was mightily impressed with your skills and, to a lesser extent, with my own. We stayed in touch.”
“All this adds up to what?”
“When the basic facts on the Blum ice-pick homicide came in through CJIS this morning, I gave Detective Clegg a friendly call and got the whole story. I figured it was now or never. As soon as Trout gets hold of this and figures out the implications, he’ll move in and declare the homicide to be part of his ongoing Good Shepherd investigation and slam the door.”