Morgan nodded vaguely. He picked up a pen from his desk, then put it back. “Dave, I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
“That business about the disappearance of Angus’s business rivals. I honestly didn’t think it amounted to anything. But I should have told you. Total openness, right?”
“Apology accepted.”
Gurney almost added, “No problem.” But that wouldn’t have been true. There was a problem—Morgan’s eagerness to view Russell in a favorable light and ignore the disappearances. It was a classic example of the tendency to view facts in a way that supports one’s own needs—a tendency that was always damaging and sometimes deadly.
It made Gurney wonder if Russell had installed Morgan as police chief because of his weaknesses, rather than in spite of them. Having an insecure police chief who depended on you could be useful. It was a point he’d need to explore, but this was not the time. There was a depth of misery in Morgan’s eyes that seemed to go far beyond the issue at hand.
“Has there been any change in your wife’s condition?” Gurney asked.
Morgan shook his head. “She’s on hospice. Lot of drugs. Mostly sleeps.” He sat up straighter, as if making a physical effort to change the subject. “What’s next on your agenda?”
That reminded Gurney where he’d been heading when he was sidetracked by the sight of Gant and his apes emerging from their meeting with Morgan. “I’m going back to the Kane crime scene. Sometimes on a second visit I notice things I missed on the first.”
Morgan nodded, his preoccupation obvious.
The weather was changing yet again. Dark clouds were breaking up, revealing areas of blue sky. Wind gusts were shaking the last droplets of rain from the maples on either side of Cotswold Lane. There was an herbal scent in the air. Patches of sunlight illuminated the flower beds in the village square.
Gurney got in the Outback, drove slowly around to the St. Giles side of the square, and headed for Mary Kane’s house.
When he got there, he parked across the road next to the swale. The yellow police tape outlining the site had been removed, but a strip had been placed diagonally across the front door of the cottage. Gurney got out of his car and crossed the road. After debating for a minute whether to enter the cottage, he loosened the tape and opened the door.
As soon as he stepped inside, he sensed, even in the semidarkness with the blinds drawn, that something was different. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the bird pictures that had hung above the couch were now on the floor. In their place, in dark red lettering, were the same words that had been found on the wall in Linda Mason’s house.
I AM
THE DARK ANGEL
WHO ROSE
FROM THE DEAD
29
Gurney called headquarters for an evidence tech to process the scene. Kyra Barstow arrived twenty minutes later in her van.
After donning her coveralls and shoe covers and performing a preliminary luminol examination of the living room wall, she confirmed that the red substance used for the lettering was blood and appeared to have been applied with the same type of brush used on Linda Mason’s upstairs wall. She then took scrapings for DNA analysis.
She and Gurney conducted a walk-through inspection of the rest of the cottage, but made no further discoveries. Everything appeared to be as it had been the previous day. They then made a similar inspection of the outside of the house and its modest grounds with a similar result. It wasn’t until they had completed their circuit of the property and were standing in front of the cottage that Gurney noticed a partial tire track in the soil at the edge of the lawn.
He pointed it out to Barstow. “That wasn’t there yesterday, was it?”
“Absolutely not. The body was dragged across that exact area. There’s no way we could have missed a tread mark.”
She took several photos with her phone, went to her van, got a ruler, laid it next to the impression for scale, and took a few more shots; then went back to the van and began preparing a special dental-stone plaster mixture to pour into the impression and create a solid model of the tread.
While she worked, Gurney went across the road for another look at the place where Mary Kane’s body had been found. He made his way around the bordering row of tall bushes and stepped down into the swale. The shade from the bushes and the relative lowness of the ground had left the grass sopping from the overnight rain. Portions of the large bloodstain had been washed away or drawn down into the soil, but the coating of water made the color of the remaining stain redder.
Gurney was overcome by a sudden wave of sadness. He wondered if it was for that old woman he never knew . . . or for himself and everyone else whose final traces would eventually disappear into the wet earth. Before he could fall any deeper into the fears and regrets that come with thoughts of mortality, the ringing of his phone pulled him back.
The screen told him that it was Chandler Aspern. With some misgivings, he took the call.
“Gurney here.”
“This is Mayor Aspern. We need to talk.”
“You have some information you want to give me?”
“That’s one way of putting it. How soon can you be in my office?”
The mayor’s peremptory tone was annoying. “How vital is this information to the case?”
“How vital? Who the hell knows? The point is, I need to talk to you.”
Gurney checked the time on his phone. It was 12:52 p.m.
“I can try to be there around one thirty.”
“Fine.”
On that curt note, Aspern ended the call. Gurney pocketed his phone, took a last look around the swale, and made his way up through the row of bushes.
Slovak, squinting in the sunlight, was just getting out of a black Dodge Charger, parked behind Gurney’s Outback.
“Just got the news at HQ,” he said, closing the car door. “Weird that Tate would take the chance of coming back here. You figure it was just to leave a creepy message?”
“If there was another reason, we haven’t discovered it yet.”
“If he wanted to leave us a message, why didn’t he do it the night he killed her?”
“The night he killed her he was on his way to kill Russell. With that on his mind, he may not have wanted to take more time here than he had to. Fear of being discovered, maybe. Sometime yesterday or last night, his other goal may have taken over.”
“Other goal?”
“He wants recognition. Common with a certain kind of killer. Ego trip. He wants the name Billy Tate up in lights.”
“Man, that is so sick!”
“But possibly helpful to us. Obsession can lead to practical mistakes.”
He pointed to Barstow, who was kneeling at the roadside, checking the solidity of the plaster cast. “Tate may have left that partial tire track over there. Could be a key piece of forensic evidence. You need to revisit the owners of the security cameras that captured the earlier videos of Tate’s Jeep. If those cameras are still operational, you should review any vehicle or foot traffic they captured between the time the last officer left here yesterday and noon today.”
“Will do. By the way, Chief Morgan just got in touch with Hilda Russell, executrix of Angus’s estate, and she’s providing copies of all his trust and testamentary provisions. Good to have all that, I guess—even though it doesn’t seem relevant to the murder. Tate sure as hell isn’t one of the beneficiaries.”
“Right. But it still might be interesting. Anything else?”
“Not much. A few more idiots over in Bastenburg claiming Tate sightings, asking about a reward. Local cops are checking them out. If anything credible turns up, I’ll let you know.”