Why would it occur to them that the six were really the sum of one and five? Why would they even start down that road? Especially if they had, from the very beginning, a solid theory of the case that made all six targets equally important. Especially if they’d received a mission killer’s manifesto that made all the murders make equal sense. A manifesto that explained everything. A manifesto so cleverly constructed and so reflective of the details of the crimes that the best and the brightest swallowed it whole.
Gurney had the feeling that finally he might be seeing something clearly—a sense that the fog was starting to lift. It was his first vision of the case that seemed, at least at first glance, coherent.
As with most of the insights in his career, his immediate thought was that it should have occurred to him sooner. After all, this way of looking at the murders was only a small turn of the dial from Madeleine’s description of that pivotal scene in The Man with the Black Umbrella. But sometimes a millimeter makes all the difference.
On the other hand, not every idea that feels right is right. Gurney knew from experience how dangerously easy it is to overlook logical flaws in one’s thinking. When the product of one’s own mind is the subject, objectivity is an illusion. We all believe we have an open mind, but no one really does. A devil’s-advocate process is essential.
His first choice for devil’s advocacy was Hardwick. He took out his phone and placed the call. When it went to voice mail, he left a brief message. “Hey, Jack. I have a slant on the case that I’d like your reaction to. Call me.”
He checked to make sure his phone was still set on vibrate. He wasn’t sure what the night had in store for him, but in the scenarios he imagined, a ringing phone could be a problem.
His next devil’s-advocate choice was Lieutenant Bullard. He didn’t know where she stood at this point, but the need he felt for feedback outweighed his concern about the politics. Besides, if his insight into the case was correct, it could tilt the politics back in his favor. That call also went into voice mail, and he left essentially the same message for her that he’d left for Hardwick.
Not knowing when Hardwick or Bullard might get back to him and still wanting to expose his new perspective to a live listener, he decided, with mixed feelings, to call Clinter. After the third ring, the man himself answered.
“Hey, laddie, trouble on your big night? You calling for help?”
“No trouble. Just an idea I want to bounce off you. Might have holes in it, or it might be significant.”
“I’m all ears.”
It suddenly struck Gurney that there was a sizable psychic overlap between Clinter and Hardwick. Clinter was Hardwick gone over the edge. The thought, strangely, made him both more and less comfortable.
Gurney explained his idea. Twice.
There was no response. As he waited, he gazed out the window at the broad, marshy pond. The full moon had risen, giving the dead trees looming above the marsh grass an eerie presence. “You there, Max?”
“I’m absorbing, laddie, absorbing. I find no fatal fault with what you say. It does, of course, raise questions.”
“Of course.”
“To be sure I understand, you’re saying that only one of the murders mattered?”
“Correct.”
“And the other five were protective cover?”
“Correct.”
“And none of the murders had a damn thing to do with the ills of society?”
“Correct.”
“And the fancy cars were targeted … why?”
“Maybe because the one victim that mattered drove one. A big, black, expensive Mercedes. Maybe that’s where the whole concept came from.”
“And the other five people were shot essentially at random? Shot because they had the same kind of car? To make it look like there was a pattern.”
“Correct. I don’t think the killer knew or cared anything about the other victims.”
“Which would make him a rather chilly fucker, wouldn’t it?”
“Correct.”
“So now the big question: Which victim was the one that mattered?”
“When I meet the Good Shepherd, I’ll ask him.”
“And you think that’ll happen tonight?” Clinter’s voice was pulsing with excitement.
“Max, you have to stay away. It’s a fragile thing I’m putting together.”
“Understood, laddie. One more question, though: How does your theory of the old murders explain the current ones?”
“That’s simple. The Good Shepherd is trying keep us from realizing that the original six victims were the sum of one and five. Somehow The Orphans of Murder has the potential to expose that secret—possibly by pointing in some way to the one that mattered. He’s killing people to keep that from happening.”
“A very desperate man.”
“More practical than desperate.”
“Christ, Gurney, he’s murdered three people in three days, according to the news.”
“Right. I just don’t think that desperation has much to do with it. I don’t believe the Shepherd regards murder as that big a deal. It’s simply an action he takes whenever it seems advantageous. Whenever he feels that killing someone will remove more risk from his life than it will create. I don’t think desperation enters into—”
A call-waiting signal stopped Gurney in midsentence. He checked the ID. “Max, I have to go. I’ve got Lieutenant Bullard from BCI trying to get through. And, Max? Stay away from here tonight. Please.”
Gurney glanced out the window. The weird black-and-silver landscape raised gooseflesh on his arms. He was standing in a shaft of moonlight that crossed the center of the room, projecting an image of the window, along with his own shadow, on the far wall above the bed.
He pressed TALK to take the waiting call. “Thank you for getting back to me, Lieutenant. I appreciate it. I think I may have some—” He never finished the sentence.
There was a stunning explosion. A white flash accompanied by a deafening blast. And a terrific impact to Gurney’s hand.
He staggered back against the table, unsure for several seconds what had happened. His right hand was numb. There was a stinging ache in his wrist.
Fearing what he might see, he held his hand up in the moonlight, turning it slowly. All the fingers were there, but he was holding only a small piece of the phone. He looked around the room, searching futilely in the darkness for other areas of damage.
The first explanation that occurred to him was that his phone had exploded. His mind raced around the edges of that improbability, trying to imagine a way it could have been set up, a time when the phone might have been accessible to someone capable of that kind of sabotage, how a miniature explosive device could have been inserted and then triggered.
But that wasn’t just improbable, it was impossible. The concussive impact, the sheer force of the explosion, put its source beyond anything he could conceive of being fitted into a functioning phone. A dummy phone, perhaps, built for the purpose, but not the phone on which he’d just been speaking.
Then he smelled ordinary cartridge gunpowder.
So it wasn’t a sophisticated mini-bomb. It was a muzzle blast.
However, it was a muzzle blast far too loud for any normal handgun—which was why he hadn’t reached the right conclusion immediately.
But he did know at least one handgun that could produce a report of that magnitude.
And at least one individual with the accuracy and steadiness of hand required to put a bullet through a cell phone by moonlight.
His next thought was that the shooter must have fired into the room through one of the windows, and he instinctively dropped to a crouch, peering up at the window over the table. However, it was still closed and the panes illumined by the moonlight were unbroken. Meaning the shot must have come from one of the rear windows. But given the position of his body at the moment of impact, it was hard to see how the bullet could have reached the phone in his hand without passing through his s
houlder.
So how …?
The answer arrived with a small shiver.
The shot hadn’t come from outside the cabin.
Someone was there, in the room, with him.
The realization came to him by sound rather than sight.
The sound of breathing.
Just a few feet away.
Slow, relaxed breathing.
Chapter 49
An Extremely Rational Man
As Gurney looked in the direction from which the sound was coming, he saw, interrupting the strip of silvery light across the cabin floor, a dark rectangle where the trapdoor had been opened. On the far side of the opening, there was just enough faintly reflected moonlight to suggest the presence of a standing figure.
A hoarse whisper confirmed the impression. “Sit at the table, Detective. Put your hands on top of your head.”
Gurney quietly followed the instructions.
“I have some questions. You must answer them quickly. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“If the answer is not quick, I will assume it’s a lie. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. First question: Is Clinter coming here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just told him on the phone not to come.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you expect him to come anyway?”
“He may. I don’t know. He’s not a predictable man.”
“That’s true. You must keep telling me the truth. The truth will keep you alive. You understand?”
“Yes.” Gurney sounded perfectly calm, as he often did in extreme situations. But inside, at that moment, he was full of fear and fury. Fear of the situation he’d walked into and fury at the arrogant miscalculation that had put him there.
He’d assumed that the Good Shepherd would conform to the timing he’d spelled out in his scene with Kim and that the man would show up at the cabin two or three hours before Clinter and Gurney’s supposed midnight meeting. In the welter of facts and twists and what-ifs swirling around in his head, he’d failed to consider the obvious possibility that the Shepherd might show up much earlier than that—maybe a good twelve hours earlier.
What the hell had he been thinking? That the Shepherd was a logical man and the logical time to arrive would be a few hours before midnight. And therefore that’s what would happen, issue resolved, on to the next point? Jesus, how fucking stupid! He told himself he was only human, and humans make mistakes. But that didn’t take the bitter edge off his making such a deadly one.
The throaty, half-vocalized whisper grew louder. “It was your hope to trick me into coming here? To somehow take me by surprise?”
The aptness of the question was unnerving. “Yes.”
“The truth. Good. It keeps you alive. So, now, your phone call to Clinter. You believe what you told him?”
“About the killings?”
“Of course about the killings.”
“Yes, I do.”
For several seconds all Gurney heard was the sound of his questioner’s breathing—followed by a question so softly uttered it was barely louder than the breathing itself. “What other thoughts do you have?”
“My only thought right now is, are you going to shoot me?”
“Of course. But the more truth you tell me, the longer you live. Simple. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now tell me all your thoughts about the killings. Your true thoughts.”
“My thoughts are mostly questions.”
“What questions?”
Gurney wondered if the hoarse whisper was a vocal impairment or a way of concealing the Good Shepherd’s real voice. He suspected the latter. The implications of that were interesting, but he had to focus now on the immediate need to stay alive.
“I wonder how many other people you’ve killed, besides the ones we know about. Possibly quite a few. Am I right about that?”
“Of course.”
Gurney was startled by the frankness of the answer and felt a fleeting moment of hope that the man could be engaged in a kind of dialogue—that his pride might drive him to boast of things he’d done. After all, sociopaths did have egos and enjoyed living in the echo chamber of their own narratives of power and ruthlessness. Perhaps he could get the man talking about himself, and thus stretch the window of opportunity for outside intervention.
But then the coin of hope flipped to its opposite side, and Gurney saw the clear implication of the man’s willingness to speak: It carried no risk, because Gurney would soon be dead.
The whisper became a parody of gentleness. “What else do you wonder about?”
“I wonder about Robby Meese and your relationship with him. I wonder how much he did on his own and how much you encouraged him to do. I wonder why you killed him when you did. I wonder if you thought his so-called suicide would be believed.”
“What else?”
“I wonder if you were really trying to put Max Clinter in the frame for Ruth Blum’s murder or if you were just playing a silly game.”
“What else?”
“I wonder if you thought your message on Ruth’s Facebook page would be believed.”
“What else?”
“I wonder about my barn.” Gurney was trying to string out the interchange as long as he could, with as many pauses as he could insert. The longer it lasted, the better—in every way.
“Keep talking, Detective.”
“I wonder about the GPS locators on the cars. I wonder if the one on Kim’s car was your idea or Robby’s. Robby the stalker.”
“What else?”
“Some of the things you’ve done are very clever, and some are very stupid. I wonder if you know which is which.”
“Provocation is pointless, Detective. Have you come to the end of your thoughts?”
“I wonder about the White Mountain Strangler. Such an odd case. Are you familiar with it? It has certain interesting features.”
There was a long silence. Time equaled hope. Time gave Gurney the space to think, perhaps even a chance to get to his gun on the table behind him.
When the Shepherd spoke again, the purr was syrupy. “Any final thoughts?”
“Just one more. How could someone so smart make such a colossal mistake at Lakeside Collision?”
There was a long silence. An alarming silence that could mean anything. Perhaps the Good Shepherd had finally been jarred off balance. Or perhaps his finger was tightening on the trigger. A tremor ran through Gurney’s stomach.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“I want to know now.” There was a new intensity in the whisper, along with the glint of something moving in the shaft of moonlight.
Gurney caught his first glimpse of the barrel of a huge silver-plated pistol, no more than six feet away.
“Now,” the man repeated. “Tell me about Lakeside Collision.”
“You left some identification there.”
“I don’t carry identification.”
“That night you did.”
“Tell me exactly what it was. Tell me right now.”
The way Gurney saw the situation, there was no good answer, no answer likely to save him. There was certainly no way that revealing the tire-track discovery would result in a reprieve. And begging for his life would be worse than useless. There was only one option that offered him even a glimmer of staying alive for as much as another minute: stonewalling, refusing to divulge anything more.
Gurney tried to keep his voice from shaking as he spoke. “You left the solution to the puzzle in the parking lot of Lakeside Collision.”
“I don’t like riddles. You have three seconds to answer my question.”
“One.” He raised his pistol slowly toward Gurney’s face.
“Two.” The barrel glinted in the shaft of moonlight.
“Three.” He pulled the trigger.
/> Chapter 50
Apocalypse
Gurney’s reflexive jerk away from the flash and the deafening blast would have sent his chair toppling over backward if it weren’t for the edge of the table. For a minute he couldn’t see anything, and all he could hear was the harsh, ringing echo of the gunshot.
He felt some wetness on the left side of his neck, a slight trickle. He put his hand to the side of his face, felt more wetness on his earlobe. As he moved his fingers higher, he discovered a searing, stinging spot at the very top of the ear—the source of the blood.
“Put your hands back on top of your head. Now.” The whispery voice seemed far away, lost in the reverberation in his ears.
But he did his best to comply.
“You hear me, yes?” said the distant, muffled voice.
“Yes,” said Gurney.
“Good. Listen carefully. I will ask you my question again. You must answer it. I am a good judge of what is true and what is not. If I hear truth, we go on, harmlessly. Just a nice conversation, you know? But if I hear a lie, I pull the trigger again. Clear?”
“Yes.”
“Each time I hear a lie, you lose something. Next time not just a little nick from your ear. You lose more important things. You understand?”
“I understand.” Gurney’s eyesight was starting to recover from the muzzle flash, and he could again make out a dim swath of moonlight across the middle of the room.
“Good. I want to know everything about this so-called mistake at Lakeside Collision. No riddles. Pure truth.” In the moonlight the silver-plated pistol barrel gradually descended until it was aligned with Gurney’s right ankle.
He gritted his teeth to keep from trembling at the thought of what a Desert Eagle slug would do to that joint. The immediate loss of his foot would be bad enough. But the arterial bleeding would be the real problem. And telling the truth or not, in response to this or any subsequent question, was not the lever that would control the outcome. The lever was the Good Shepherd’s sense of personal security. And that lever could now move in only one direction. Because there was no possible scenario in which Gurney alive could pose a lesser risk to the Good Shepherd than Gurney dead.