“Too early to say. I just have an uncomfortable feeling that whatever is going on in that fancy little village might be worse than it seems.”
“Worse than a zombie running around cutting people’s throats?” Hardwick’s smile broadened. There was a glint in the ice-blue eyes. The man had a natural hunger for a challenge.
25
During the hour-long drive to Larchfield, the rain, which had stopped shortly after dawn, began again. Gurney’s thoughts wandered between the disquieting information Hardwick had given him about Angus Russell’s business dealings and his own concerns about Morgan’s reasons for drawing him into the case.
It was probable that Morgan’s motivation was more or less as he had described it, but Gurney couldn’t help wondering if the man might, in some as-yet-undisclosed way, be planning to collect on the debt incurred in the Bronx shoot-out.
Is there some aspect of the case he’s expecting me to approach in a way favorable to him because of what I owe him? Am I supposed to extricate him from a tangle he’s gotten himself into? Am I getting sucked into a cover-up? Or am I being as paranoid as he seems to be?
Convinced that questions about Morgan’s motives were, for the present, unanswerable, he finally managed to push them aside.
By the time he arrived in Larchfield, the rain had stopped but dark clouds remained. In his dour mood, they reminded him of wads of dirty cotton.
There were two media vans in front of police headquarters. He found a third in the rear parking area, along with several private cars. Among them was Mayor Aspern’s dark blue BMW.
As soon as Gurney opened the door of the Outback, a blond woman in a red blazer came hurrying toward him from the van, followed by a video tech.
“Can I ask you just one question?”
It was by her sharply distinctive voice—as much as by the blazer and mass of blond hair—that he recognized RAM’s Kelly Tremain. He smiled at the “just one question” gambit. It provoked curiosity, seemed easy to deal with, and was hard to say no to.
“No,” said Gurney pleasantly.
“Just one quick question, David!” she called after him as he was walking out of the parking area.
He wondered for a moment how she’d gotten his name, but it wasn’t worth asking. His involvement could have been leaked by whoever had leaked the mortuary video. Or by someone else. RAM might even have rapid facial recognition software on their satellite vans. It didn’t really matter. The notion that one’s identity could be kept secret was, like most forms of personal privacy, a relic of a departed era.
The headquarters desk sergeant—an overweight man with a shaved head, walrus mustache, and uniform buttons strained to the popping point—directed him to Morgan’s office.
A discreet brass plate on the door bore the words CHIEF OF POLICE.
Gurney knocked, and Morgan’s voice replied, “Come in.”
Although much smaller than the conference room, Gurney noted that the walls and furnishings were of the same lustrous mahogany. In addition to a substantial desk and several bookcases, there was a round table with six chairs encircling it. Morgan was standing behind one of them. Brad Slovak and Kyra Barstow were seated across from each other.
“Join us,” said Morgan, gesturing to one of the empty chairs. “We need to review the case status before I meet with the village board. I’ve asked Brad and Kyra to update us. You want coffee?”
“Just had some.” Gurney took a seat at the table.
“Okay. Brad, you’re up.”
Slovak stretched his thick neck from side to side, then ran both hands back over his bristly scalp. “First the simple stuff. Stakeout guys in the woods keeping an eye on the Cursen place reported no activity last night, then one car arriving this morning. Plate check made the registration in the name of Harold Stern. There’s a Harold Stern in an Albany law firm. Garbel, Stern, Harshman, and Black. Could be she anticipates a problem, wants some on-site advice.”
“Too bad,” said Morgan. “Any responses to our APB?”
“Zilch. Some requests for clarification, but no leads. Opposite of the deluge of calls triggered by that RAM News thing last night, with the leaked video. People are spotting Tate everywhere, at opposite ends of the county at the same time. You know what I think is gonna happen? Crazy teenagers dripping red paint on their hoodies and trying to scare the shit out of people. Somebody’s likely to get shot, the way Gant’s stirring things up.”
“That’s all we need,” muttered Morgan. “Anything from the local door-to-doors?”
“Nothing new.”
He turned to Kyra. “Any forensic results?”
“Fingerprints at both the Kane and Mason homicides have been ID’d as Billy Tate’s. Sneaker prints on the dusty floor of the Mason barn match the sneaker prints at the mortuary and the image of the sneaker soles in the video of Tate on the stretcher in front of the church. The message on the wall of Linda Mason’s house was written in her own blood type, DNA confirmation to come. The blood appears to have been applied with a narrow, disposable sponge brush. We didn’t find any similar brushes in the house or barn, so it’s likely Tate came prepared.”
Morgan looked across the table at Gurney. “What do you make of that?”
“An interesting combination of lunacy and logic.”
Morgan nodded uneasily. “Is that it, Kyra?”
“For now.”
“Dave, you have any questions?”
“I do.” He turned to Slovak. “When computer forensics got into Mary Kane’s phone, what did they look for?”
“Phone and text messages, sent and received. That was the point, right?”
“It might be worth checking to see if she used the phone as a recorder.”
“Recording her calls?”
“I’ve been thinking about that nocturnal birding club that texted her.”
“The owl club?”
“Right. You said one of the texts referred to a website where she could listen to birdcalls. I thought if she was interested in that sort of thing, it could be the reason why she had the phone out on the porch with her in the middle of the night—to record the calls, hoots, whatever, of owls. I doubt she was expecting an urgent call at two in the morning.”
Slovak blinked in puzzlement. “You want to know if she recorded any owl hoots?”
“If she had her phone out there to record those sounds, and if that function was on when she was killed, something useful may have been recorded. It’s a long shot, but easy enough to check.”
“Will do.”
Morgan cast a nervous glance at his watch. “Thanks, all. Let me know the instant anything significant comes up.”
Realizing they’d been dismissed, Slovak and Barstow left the office.
Morgan put on a grim smile. “Now we face the village board. Expect the worst. It consists of Ron Fallow, Danforth Peale, Chandler Aspern, Hilda Russell, Harmon Gossett, Martin Carmody, and Gifford Styles. Gossett is the village attorney, sharp as a razor, with the warmth and charm of a corpse; Carmody is the retired CEO of a PR agency; Styles is an old-money idiot Angus installed on the board to give himself an extra vote. You ready for this?”
“I was told this morning that a couple of individuals who had business conflicts with Angus conveniently disappeared off the face of the earth. Is that true?”
Morgan shook his head. “The way you’re saying it makes it sound terrible. There was never even the slightest evidence of Angus’s involvement in anything . . . anything like the way you’re making it sound. There wasn’t a speck of proof that those so-called ‘disappearances’ were anything other than voluntary—and unrelated to Angus.”
“But you are aware of these incidents.”