She thought for a moment. “It rained yesterday morning. It was over by noon. Why?”
“There’s a strip of dirt in a crevice out there at the edge of the road, maybe an inch wide. Anyone coming into the driveway would have to cross it, unless they drove through the woods and across the lawn. But that little strip of dirt doesn’t seem to have been disturbed, at least not since the last rain.”
“An inch is not necessarily enough to register—”
“Maybe not, but it’s suggestive. Plus, there’s the psychological factor. If the Good Shepherd is back, if this is his seventh victim, then what we already know about him has to figure into it.”
“Like what?”
“One thing we know is that he is extremely cautious, extremely risk-averse. And that short driveway is too exposed. Any vehicle sitting out there—especially anything the size of a Hummer—would have its rear bumper practically on the road. Way too eye-catching, way too identifiable. A local cop cruising by might zero in on a strange car like that, might stop to check it out, might run the plate number.”
Bullard frowned. “But the fact is, Ruth Blum was killed, and if the killer came in a vehicle, he had to park it somewhere. So what are you saying? Where did he park it? On the shoulder of the road? That would be even more exposed.”
“My guess would be at the body shop.”
“The what?”
“Half mile down the state route, back in the direction of Ithaca, there’s an auto-body shop. There are some cars and trucks in a scruffy little parking area beside it, either waiting to be worked on or waiting to be picked up. It’s the one place in the neighborhood where a strange vehicle wouldn’t raise a question—wouldn’t even be noticed. If I were going to kill someone in this house in the middle of the night, I’d park there, and then I’d walk the rest of the way here in that deep swale by the side of the road to avoid being seen by passing drivers.”
She stared down at the tabletop, as though trying to see the possibilities in an imaginary set of scrabble letters. She made a face. “Theoretically, that might make sense. Problem is, her Facebook posting specifically refers to a vehicle pulling in—”
“You mean the Facebook posting.”
“I don’t get what—”
“You’re assuming it was her posting.”
“It was her account, her page, her computer, her password.”
“Couldn’t her murderer have extracted the password from her before he killed her, opened the page, and composed the message himself?”
Bullard redoubled her scrutiny of the tabletop. She shook her head uncertainly. “That’s conceivable. But like your body-shop theory, there’s no evidence to support it.”
Gurney smiled at the opening. “After your boys in the white suits confirm that the dirt in the crack at the end of the driveway hasn’t been disturbed, ask them to pay a visit to the body shop. It would be interesting to see if they can find a relatively fresh set of tire tracks that don’t match up with any of the vehicles there.”
“But … why would the killer take the time and trouble to leave a message like that on Facebook?”
“Sand in our eyes. A twist in the maze. He’s very good at that.”
Something in her expression told him she was open to every speck of information she could lay her hands on.
“How much do you know about the original case?” he asked.
“Not as much as I need to,” she admitted. “Someone from the FBI field office is on his way here to give me a briefing. Speaking of which, I’ll need your address, e-mail, phone numbers where you can be reached twenty-four hours a day. You have any problem with that?”
“No problem at all.”
“I’ll give you my e-mail and cell number. I assume you’ll pass along any relevant facts that come your way?”
“Be happy to.”
“Okay. I’m totally out of time here. We’ll talk again.”
As Gurney left the house, the RAM helicopter was still circling noisily, its thumping rotor wash loosening the few dead leaves that were still clinging to the topmost branches of the trees, sending them swirling downward. Before he could reach his car, he was intercepted by the fluffy-coiffed, brightly made-up reporter with a mike in her hand and a video man behind her. “I’m Jill McCoy, Eye on the News, Syracuse!” she cried, her face showing the expression of alarmed curiosity that was a standard feature of her breed. “I’ve been told that you’re Detective Dave Gurney, the man New York magazine called the Supercop. Dave, is it true that the Good Shepherd, the infamous mass murderer, has struck again?”
“Excuse me,” said Gurney, forcing his way by her.
She extended the mike toward him, shouting a string of questions at his back as he opened his car door, got in, closed it, turned on the ignition. “Was she killed because of her TV appearance? Something she said? Is this horrible case too big for our local police? Is that why they brought you in? How are you involved? Is it true you have a problem with the FBI? What’s that problem all about, Detective Gurney?”
As he edged out of his parking spot, the video camera was just inches from his side window. The traffic trooper was doing nothing to alleviate the problem. In fact, he was totally absorbed in a conversation with a new arrival on the scene. Pulling out onto the state road, Gurney caught a glimpse of the man—compact, dark-haired, unsmiling. It was just enough of a glimpse for Gurney to recognize him.
It was Daker.
Chapter 32
The Multiplier
As Gurney rounded the first bend in the road, the body shop came into view. He slowed as he passed it, noting the sign on the concrete-block building: LAKESIDE COLLISION. He was still convinced it was the perfect place to park a car inconspicuously.
Halfway to Walnut Crossing, he passed a billboard for Verizon Cellular, and it reminded him that he’d switched off his phone when he sat down at the kitchen table with Bullard. He switched it back on to check for messages. The screen said there were seven. Before he had a chance to listen to any of them, a new call came in.
Gurney pressed TALK.
The caller was Kyle, and he sounded agitated. “We’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Kim is really freaked out. She’s been trying to get you. She’s already left three messages for you.”
“Is it about Ruth Blum?”
“Mainly that. But also The Orphans of Murder thing last night on TV. She hated how they put it together, what they cut and what they added, especially those two jerks. She’s really upset.”
“Where is she?”
“In the bathroom, crying. Again. Wait, no. I hear the door opening. Hold on.”
Gurney heard Kim asking Kyle who he was talking to, Kyle’s voice saying, “My dad.” Kim sniffling in the background, blowing her nose. The sound of the phone being handed from one to the other. Muffled voices. More nose blowing, throat clearing.
Finally she was speaking to him. “Dave?”
“I’m here.”
“This is a nightmare. I can’t believe it’s happening. I want to go to sleep and wake up again and discover that none of it is real.”
“I hope you’re not blaming yourself for what happened to Ruth.”
“Of course I am!”
“You’re not responsible for—”
Kim interrupted, her voice rising. “She wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t talked her into doing this stupid program!”
“You’re not responsible for her death, and you’re not responsible for what RAM News did with your interview, or what they put in, or how they—”
“They cut my interview in half and surrounded it with all that pompous nonsense from their so-called experts.” She made the word sound like someone spitting. “Oh, God, I just want to disappear. I want to erase everything. Erase everything that killed Ruthie.”
“A murderer killed her.”
“But it wouldn’t have happened if—”
“Listen to
me, Kim. A murderer killed Ruth Blum. A murderer with his own agenda. Probably the same murderer who killed her husband ten years ago.”
She didn’t say anything. He could hear her breathing. Slow, shaky breaths. When she finally spoke, her near hysteria had declined into plain misery. “It’s what Larry Sterne kept telling me—it all turned out to be true. He said RAM would twist everything and make it cheap and ugly and awful. He said they’d be better at using me than I’d be at using them, that all they cared about was getting the largest possible audience, that the price of my project would outweigh its rewards. And he was right. Totally right.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Do? I want to get as far away from RAM as I can. I want out.”
“Have you told Rudy Getz?”
“Yes.” There was something uncertain in her voice.
“Yes … but?”
“I called him this morning—before I got your message about Ruth. I told him how disappointed I was, that the program was nothing like what we’d talked about.”
“And?”
“I told him if that’s the way it was going to be, then I didn’t want to do it.”
“And?”
“He said that he wanted me to meet with him, it wasn’t something we could resolve on the phone, we had to talk about it face-to-face.”
“You agreed to meet with him?”
“Yes.”
“Did you speak to him again, after you found out about Ruth’s murder?”
“Yes. He said that made it even more important for us to get together. He said the murder was a multiplier.”
“A what?”
“A multiplier. He said that it raised the stakes, that we had to talk about it.”
“It raised the stakes?”
“That’s what he said.”
“When are you getting together?”
“At noon on Wednesday. At his place in Ashokan Heights.”
Gurney had the impression she was leaving something out. “And?”
There was a pause. “Oh, God … I hate to ask you this. I feel like such a naïve, helpless little idiot.”
Gurney waited, pretty sure he knew what was coming.
“My vision of what this was going to be like … my assumptions … the way I thought … What I’m trying to say is … my thinking about all of this is obviously not very sound. I need … I need the support, the input of a clearer mind. I have no right to ask you this, but … please …?”
“You want me to come to your Wednesday meeting with Getz?”
“Very much so. Would you? Could you?”
Chapter 33
Getting the Message
At the sign on Franklin Mountain welcoming him back into Delaware County, Gurney left the afternoon sun behind him and descended into a clouded valley. Weather in the mountains seemed to change hourly.
During the remainder of his drive home, he had to keep switching his wipers on and off. He hated driving in the rain—heavy rain, light rain, drizzle, anything gray and wet. Grayness and wetness tended to fertilize his worries.
He became aware of a soreness in his jaw muscles. He’d been clenching his teeth—a side effect of the tension and anger propelling his thoughts.
PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Three unnerving words. If Holdenfield was right, if his thinking was damaged …
What was it Kim said she needed from him? The input of a clearer mind than hers? He let out a sharp little laugh. Clarity was not currently his strong point.
The thought of their phone conversation reminded him of the seven messages in his voice mail he hadn’t listened to. He was just turning up the mountain lane to his farmhouse, telling himself he’d listen to the messages as soon as he got there. But, afraid of forgetting again, he decided to pull over and go through them.
The first three were from Kim—increasingly stressed requests for him to call her.
The fourth was from Kim’s mother, Connie Clarke.
“David! What on earth is going on? All this crazy stuff on the news today? About Ruth what’s-her-name getting killed after Kim’s interview? And the talking heads all screaming that the Good Shepherd is back? Jeez! Give me a call, let me know what’s going on. I just got a totally hysterical message from Kim—that she wants to quit, back out of the show, throw it all away. Completely out of control. I don’t understand any of this. I called her back, couldn’t get through, left a message, but I haven’t heard back. I assume that you’re in touch with her? That you know what the hell is happening? I mean, that was the whole idea, right? For Christ’s sake, call me!”
Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. He definitely didn’t feel like spending half an hour on the phone with her, filling her in on all the chaos, all the unanswered questions, just because her daughter wasn’t returning her calls.
The fifth message had no ID beyond WIRELESS CALLER. But there was no mistaking the manic intensity of Max Clinter’s voice.
“Mr. Gurney, so sorry you couldn’t pick up. I was looking forward to some give-and-take. So much has happened since last we talked. The Shepherd would appear to be among us once again. Little Corazon brought him back to life. Heard your name invoked on that vile Orphans thing on TV. Ram-shit. But from what was said, it sounded like you had ideas. Ideas of your own. Maybe not unlike mine. Want to share and share alike? Win or lose, time to choose. The finale isn’t far off now. This time I’ll be ready. Final question: Is David Gurney friend or foe?”
Dave listened to that one three times. He still wasn’t sure whether Clinter was a nutcase or just found it a comfortable role to play. Holdenfield had insisted that he was a mentally disturbed pain in the ass. But Gurney wasn’t quite ready to discount the man who had talked himself into that little room in Buffalo and left five armed mobsters dead on the floor.
He looked at his dashboard clock. It was a minute past four. The mist had stopped, at least temporarily. He pulled back onto the gravel-and-dirt lane and headed up the mountain.
When he got to the little parking area by their side door, he saw that the light was on in the upstairs room that Madeleine sometimes used for her knitting and crocheting. She’d gone back to using it only in the last month or two. It had been the site of a threatening intrusion into the house during the course of the Perry investigation the previous September—the investigation that ended with Gurney being shot.
The thought of it brought his hand to the numb spot on his forearm, checking automatically for any change in feeling—a habit that the busyness of the past week had derailed. It would be nice to keep it derailed. He got out of the car and went into the house.
Madeleine wasn’t knitting after all. He could hear her playing her guitar.
“I’m home!” he called out.
“I’ll be down soon,” came the voice from the second floor.
He listened as she played through a few more bars of something pleasantly melodic, ending in a loud resolving chord.
After a few seconds of silence she called down to him, “Listen to number three on the machine.”
Jesus. Not another disturbing message. He’d had more than his fill for the day. He hoped this one would be innocuous. He went into the den to the old landline phone, pressed the button to get to number three, and listened.
“I hope I’m reaching the right Detective Gurney. I’m really sorry if I’ve got the wrong one. The Detective Gurney I’m looking for has been fucking a whore by the name of Kim Corazon. He’s a pathetic, disgusting old fool who’s at least twice the whore’s age. If you’re the wrong Detective Gurney, maybe you could pass along a question to the right one. Ask him if he knows that his son is fucking the same whore. Like father, like son. Maybe Rudy Getz could turn it into a RAM reality show—Gurney Family Gang Bang. Have a nice day, Detective.”
It was the voice of Robby Meese, all pretense of smoothness stripped away, the vocal equivalent of a serrated knife.
As he was replaying the message, Madeleine appeared at the den door, her expr
ession unreadable. “Do you know who that is?” she asked.
“Kim’s ex.”
She nodded grimly, as though the idea had already occurred to her. “He seems to know there’s some sort of relationship between Kim and Kyle. How would he know that?”
“Maybe he saw them together.”
“Where?”
“Maybe in Syracuse?”
“How would he know Kyle was your son?”
“If he’s the one who bugged her apartment, he’d know a lot.”
She folded her arms tightly. “Do you think he might have followed them back here?”
“Possibly.”
“So he could also have followed them yesterday to Kyle’s apartment?”
“Tailing someone in city traffic isn’t as simple as it sounds, especially for someone not used to driving in Manhattan. It’s too easy to get separated with all the stoplights.”
“He sounds motivated.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he sounds like he really hates you.”
Chapter 34
Allies and Enemies
They were finishing an early dinner of salmon, peas, and rice, with a sweet-pepper sauce. They’d been discussing the meeting that Madeleine would be attending that evening at the clinic for further exploration of the recent suicide and the procedures in place for identifying danger signals in the clients. She was noticeably edgy and preoccupied.
“With that horrible phone message and everything else going on today, I forgot to tell you that the insurance adjuster was here.”
“He was here to examine the barn?”
“And ask questions.”
“Like Kramden?”
“He covered the same ground. List of contents, who did what when, details of any other insurance policies we have, et cetera.”
“I assume you gave him copies of the same stuff we gave Kramden?”
“Her.”
“Sorry?”
“It was a woman. She wanted sales receipts for the bicycle and the kayaks.” In Madeleine’s voice there was sadness and anger. “You have any idea where they are?”