He was afraid of being wrong.
He parked next to Madeleine’s car by the side door of the farmhouse. The mountain air felt chilly. He went into the house, hung up his jacket in the mudroom, continued on into the kitchen, and called out, “I’m home.” There was no response. The place had an indescribable deadness about it—a peculiar sort of emptiness it had only when Madeleine was out.
He had to go to the bathroom, started in that direction, then remembered that he’d forgotten to bring in Kim’s blue folder from the car. He went back out for it, but before he got to the car, something bright and red to the right of the parking area caught his eye. It was in the middle of the raised garden bed where Madeleine had planted flowers the previous year—a fact that was responsible for his first impression: that it was some sort of red blossom atop a straight stem. A second later it occurred to him that the time of year would make any blossom unlikely. However, when he reached the bed and realized what he was actually looking at, the truth didn’t make any more sense than a rose in full bloom would have.
The straight stem was the shaft of an arrow. The arrow was sticking point-down into the soft wet earth, and the “blossom” was the fletching on the notched end—three scarlet half feathers, shining brilliantly in the angled sun.
Gurney gazed at it wonderingly. Had Madeleine put it there? If so, where had she gotten it? Was she using it as some sort of marker? It looked new, unweathered, so it couldn’t have been under the snow the whole winter. If Madeleine hadn’t put it there, who could have? Was it possible it wasn’t “put” there at all but shot there by someone with a bow? To have ended up embedded like this at a nearly vertical angle, though, it would have to have been shot nearly vertically into the air. When? Why? By whom? Standing where?
He stepped up onto the low bed, grasped the shaft close to the ground, and slowly extracted it. It was tipped with a four-pronged razor broadhead—making it the kind of arrow that a hunter with a serious bow can propel clear through a deer. As he studied the deadly projectile, he was struck by the improbable coincidence of coming upon two sharp weapons surrounded by troubling questions on the same day.
Of course, Madeleine might have a simple explanation for the arrow. He took it into the house, to the kitchen sink, and rinsed it clean under the running water. The broadhead appeared to be carbon steel, keen enough to shave with. Which brought his mind back to the knife in Kim’s basement, which reminded him that her folder was still in the car. He laid the arrow gently on the pine sideboard and headed out through the little hallway past the mudroom.
As he opened the side door, he came face-to-face with Madeleine, dressed in one of her startling color combinations—rose sweatpants, a lavender fleece jacket, and an orange baseball cap. She had that pleasantly exercised, slightly-out-of-breath look she always had when she returned from a hill walk. He stepped back to let her in.
She smiled. “It’s soooo beautiful! Did you see that amazing light on the hillside? With that blush in the buds—did you notice that?”
“What buds?”
“You didn’t see it? Oh, come here, come.” She led him outside by the arm, pointing happily to the trees beyond the upper pasture. “You only see it in the early spring—that hint of pink in the maples.”
Gurney saw what she was talking about but failed to share her blissful reaction. Instead the faint wash of color over the brownish gray background of the landscape jogged loose an old memory—one that sickened him: brownish gray water in a ditch next to an abandoned service road behind La Guardia Airport, a faint reddish tint in the fetid water. The tint was oozing from a machine-gunned body just below the surface.
She looked at him with concern. “Are you okay?”
“Tired, that’s all.”
“You want some coffee?”
“No.” He said it sharply, didn’t know why.
“Come inside,” she said, taking off her jacket and hat and hanging them in the mudroom. He followed her into the kitchen. She went to the sink and turned on the tap. “How did your trip to Syracuse work out?”
It occurred to him that the damn blue folder was still in his car. “I can’t hear you with the water running,” he said. That made … what? Three times he’d forgotten to bring it in? Three times in the past ten minutes? Jesus.
She filled a glass and turned off the water. “I asked about your trip to Syracuse.”
He sighed. “The trip was peculiar. Syracuse is pretty bleak. Hold on … I’ll tell you about it in a minute.” He went out to the car and this time returned with the object in hand.
Madeleine looked perplexed. “I’d heard that there were some very nice old neighborhoods. Maybe not in the part of town you were in?”
“Yes and no. Nice old neighborhoods interspersed with neighborhoods from hell.”
She glanced at the folder in his hand. “Is that Kim’s project?”
“What? Oh. Yes.” He looked around for a place to put it and noticed the arrow where he’d left it on the sideboard. He pointed to it. “What do you know about that?”
“That?” She stepped closer, examined it without touching it. “Is that the thing I saw outside?”
“When did you see it?”
“I don’t know. When I went out. Maybe an hour ago?”
“You don’t know anything about it?”
“Only that it was sticking in the flower bed. I thought you’d put it there.” There was a long silence as he stared at the arrow and she stared at him. “You think someone is hunting up here?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
“It’s not hunting season.”
“Maybe some drunk thinks it is.”
“Pleasant thought.”
She glared at the arrow, then shrugged. “You look exhausted. Come, sit down.” She gestured toward the table by the French doors. “Tell me about your day.”
When he had recounted everything he could remember, including Kim’s request to hire him to accompany her to two meetings the following day, he searched Madeleine’s face for a reaction. But instead of commenting on his narrative, she changed the subject.
“I had kind of a weighty day, too.” She leaned forward as she spoke, her elbows on the table, and pressed her palms together in front of her face, resting her chin on her thumbs. She closed her eyes and, for what seemed like a very long time, said nothing.
Then she opened her eyes, put her hands in her lap, straightened her back. “Do you remember me mentioning the mathematician?”
“Vaguely.”
“The math professor who was a client at the clinic?”
“Oh. Right.”
“He was originally referred to us as the result of a second DWI. Had career problems leading to no career at all, nasty divorce, alienation from his children, problems with the neighbors. Dark outlook, trouble sleeping, obsessed with the negative aspects of every situation he was involved in. Brilliant mind, but trapped in a downward spiral of depression. He came to three group sessions a week, plus one individual session. He was generally willing to talk. Or maybe I should say he was willing to complain, willing to blame everyone for everything. But never willing to do anything. Not even willing to leave the house, unless it was court-mandated. Wouldn’t take antidepressant medication, because that would mean accepting the fact that his own mental chemistry might be part of all his other problems. It’s almost funny. He was determined to do everything his way, and his way was to do nothing.” She smiled sadly and gazed out the window.
“What happened?”
“Last night he shot himself.”
They sat quietly at the table for a long while, looking out over the hills from the crossed angles of their individual chairs. Gurney felt strangely unhooked from time and place.
“So,” she said, turning back to him, “the little lady wants to hire you. And all you have to do is follow her around and tell her how you think she’s handling herself?”
“That’s what she says.”
“You’re wondering if there might be m
ore to it?”
“If today was any indication, there might be a few hidden twists.”
She gave him one of those long, thoughtful looks of hers that felt like explorations of his soul. Then, with evident effort, she constructed a bright smile. “With you on the job, I don’t imagine they’ll stay hidden long.”
Chapter 6
Twists and Turns
As the sun set, they had a quiet dinner of sweet-potato soup and spinach salad. Afterward, Madeleine built a small fire in the old woodstove at the far end of the room and settled into her favorite armchair with a book—War and Peace, a tome she’d been plodding through, on and off, for nearly a year now.
He noted that she hadn’t bothered to get her reading glasses and the book rested in her lap unopened. He felt the need to say something. “When did you find out about the …?”
“The suicide? Late this morning.”
“Someone called?”
“The director. She wanted everyone who’d had contact with him to come in for a meeting. Ostensibly to share information, absorb the shock together. Which, of course, was nonsense. It was all about ass covering, damage control, whatever you want to call it.”
“How long did the meeting last?”
“I don’t know. What difference does it make?”
He didn’t answer, really had no answer, didn’t even know why he’d asked. She opened her book, seemingly at random, stared down at it.
After a minute or two, Gurney got Kim’s project folder from the sideboard and brought it back to the table. He flipped past the sections titled “Concept” and “Documentary Overview” and quickly scanned the “Style and Methodology” section, pausing only to read more carefully a sentence that Kim had emphasized by typing it with an underscore: Interviews will examine the lasting effects of the original murders, exploring deeply all the ways in which the lives of the families were altered.
He skimmed through several more sections, slowing down when he came to one titled “Contact Summaries and Status.” It was organized in the sequence of the six Good Shepherd shootings. The information was laid out in the form of a spreadsheet, with columns under three headings: Attack Victims, Available Family Members, Current Attitude Toward Participation.
His eye ran down the victim list: Bruno and Carmella Mellani, Carl Rotker, Ian Sterne, Sharon Stone, Dr. James Brewster, Harold Blum. After Carmella Mellani’s name, there was an asterisk with a corresponding footnote that read, “Survived massive cranial trauma during attack, remains in persistent vegetative coma.”
He skipped over the second column, which provided a detailed list of family members (with their locations, life situations, ages, and personal descriptions), and glanced at the third-column summaries of their “current attitudes.”
The widow of Harold Blum was said to be “totally cooperative, grateful for the interest being shown, deeply emotional, still cries during discussion of the subject.”
The son of Dr. Brewster was described as “abusive toward the memory of his father, in open sympathy with the philosophy of TGS, obsessed with the evils of materialism.”
The son of Ian Sterne, dental entrepreneur, was “low-key, resistant to participating, concerned about the project’s disruptive emotional effects, skeptical of the intentions of RAM-TV, critical of the relentless sensationalism of their original coverage of the shootings.”
The son of real-estate broker Sharon Stone “expressed great enthusiasm for the project, spoke eagerly about his mother’s strengths, the horror of her death, the devastating effect on his own life, the intolerable injustice of the killer’s escape.”
There were more family members and more status descriptions, followed by the transcripts of two interviews—with Jimi Brewster and with Ruth Blum—and a twenty-page copy of the Good Shepherd’s “Memorandum of Intent.” As Gurney was about to put the folder aside, he noticed that there was a final page that had not been cataloged in the table of contents—a page headlined “Contacts for Background Information.”
There were three names on it, with e-mail addresses and phone numbers for each: FBI Special Agent in Charge Matthew Trout, (Former) NYSP Senior Investigator Max Clinter, and NYSP Senior Investigator Jack Hardwick.
He stared with surprise at the third name. Jack Hardwick was a super-smart, super-abrasive detective with whom Dave had a complex relationship—having crossed Hardwick’s path in bizarre and contentious circumstances.
Gurney headed for the phone to call Kim. He was interested in talking to Hardwick, but before he did, he wanted to find out why she’d listed the man as an information source.
She picked up immediately. “Dave?”
“Yes.”
“I was just going to call you.” Her voice sounded more strained than pleased. “Your conversation with Schiff got things pretty stirred up.”
“How so?”
“He came here to my apartment, I guess right after you spoke to him. He wanted to see everything you’d told him about. He seemed really pissed off that I’d cleaned up the kitchen floor, but too bad, right? How was I supposed to know he was coming? He said an evidence guy would be back here tonight to check out the basement. I guess it’s a good thing that I couldn’t bring myself to go down there and clean the stairs. Jeez, I get the chills thinking about it! And he’s insisting on sticking those creepy little spy cameras all around the apartment.”
“Is it true that you previously refused them?”
“He said that?”
“He also said he ran lab tests on the bathroom bloodstain.”
“So?”
“I’d gotten the impression from you that he hadn’t done much of anything.”
She paused before answering. “It wasn’t so much what he did or didn’t do. The problem was his attitude. It was really sucky. He couldn’t have cared less.”
Although this response didn’t quite resolve the matter in Gurney’s mind, he decided to let it drop—at least for now.
“Kim, I’m looking at the background sources listed on the final page of your document—in particular a detective by the name of Hardwick. How does he happen to be involved in this?”
“You know him?” Her voice sounded wary.
“Yes, I do.”
“Well … when I started researching the Good Shepherd case a few months ago, I gathered the names of the law-enforcement people who were mentioned in news reports back when it happened. One of the earlier shootings took place in Hardwick’s jurisdiction, and he was one of the state police investigators who was temporarily involved.”
“Temporarily?”
“Everything changed after the third weekend, I think it was, when one of the shootings occurred over the state line in Massachusetts. At that point the FBI took over.”
“Special Agent in Charge Matthew Trout?”
“Yeah, Trout. Control-freak asshole.”
“You’ve spoken to him?”
“He told me to go back and read the press releases issued by the FBI at the time. Then he instructed me to submit my questions in writing. Then he refused to answer any of them. If you call that speaking to him, then I guess I did. Officious jerk!”
Gurney smiled to himself. Welcome to the FBI.
“But Hardwick was willing to talk to you?”
“Not so much at first—not until he discovered that Trout was trying to control the information flow. Then he seemed happy to do whatever would make Trout unhappy.”
“That’s Jack. Used to say that FBI stood for Fucking Blithering Idiots.”
“He’s still saying it.”
“So why is Trout on your information list if he refuses to provide any?”
“That’s more for the RAM people. Trout might not talk to me, but Rudy Getz is different. You’d be amazed at who returns his calls. And how fast.”
“Interesting. And what about the third name—Max Clinter?”
“Max Clinter. Well. Where to start? Do you know anything about him at all?”
“The name rings a di
stant bell, that’s about it.”
“Clinter was the off-duty detective who got entangled in the final Good Shepherd attack.”
The memory of the tabloid accounts came back. “Was he the guy with the art student in his car … drunk out of his mind … firing his gun out the window … sideswiped a guy on a motorcycle … got blamed for the Good Shepherd escaping?”
“Yep.”
“He’s one of your sources?”
Kim’s voice was defensive. “I’m taking whatever and whoever I can get. The problem is that just about everyone involved in the case refers all questions to Trout—which is like dropping them into a black hole.”
“So what have you managed to find out from Clinter?”
“That’s not easy to answer. He’s a strange man. With a lot on his mind. I’m not sure I understand all of it. Maybe we could talk about it tomorrow in the car? I didn’t realize how late it was getting, and I need to take a shower.”
Although Gurney didn’t believe her, he didn’t object. He was eager to talk to Jack Hardwick.
The call went into voice mail. He left a message.
Dusk was rapidly darkening into night. Rather than turn on the light in the den, he took Kim’s project folder out to the kitchen table. Madeleine was still sitting in her armchair by the flickering woodstove at the far end of the room. War and Peace had moved from her lap to the coffee table in front of her, and she was knitting.
“So have you figured out where that arrow came from?” she asked, without looking up.
He glanced over at the sideboard, at the black graphite shaft and its red fletching. Something about it made him feel almost queasy.
Then, as though the feeling had been the herald of a rising memory, he recalled an incident in the apartment house of his Bronx childhood. He was thirteen. It was dark out. His father was either working late or out drinking. His mother was at one of her ballroom-dancing lessons at a studio in Manhattan—a consuming mania that had displaced her former obsession with finger painting. His grandmother was in her bedroom, muttering over her rosary beads. He was in his mother’s bedroom—hers exclusively, ever since his father had begun sleeping on the living-room couch and keeping his clothes in a closet in the hallway.