“Amazing,” she said, the expression on her face reflecting the radiance of the scene. She sighed and turned back to Gurney. “Tell me as much as you like.”
He took a moment to figure out where to begin.
“Morgan’s father was near the top of the ladder at the NYPD, and his twin brothers were both precinct commanders. There was an eight-year gap between them and Morgan, and he claimed they called him ‘the mistake.’ His father alternated between ignoring him and pointing out his deficiencies. Morgan was hell-bent on winning his family’s approval. He was great on paper, aced his promotion exams. But he had all kinds of fears, along with a disastrous way of dealing with them.”
“Drugs?”
“Women. Sometimes women who were involved in cases he was investigating. Even a potential suspect or two. Those mistakes could have put him in prison. But apparently the rush blinded him to the risk.”
“Sounds like he was fixing a low self-esteem problem by doing something that would make it worse. Like the addicts I see at the clinic. How did he get away with it?”
“No one wanted to get on the wrong side of his father, so there was a tendency to let things slide, as long as they weren’t too obvious or didn’t screw up a prosecution. But eventually one of the captains got fed up and told Morgan he needed to resign or the issue would go to the professional standards unit, with the possibility of criminal prosecution. In the end, he was allowed to stay a few more months to get to his pension-vesting date. A quiet exit.”
“Zero consequences for his actions?”
“Right.”
“And the Larchfield authorities concluded that this law-enforcement paragon would make an ideal police chief?”
“Not immediately. He told me he was hired first to head up security at their local college. A year later they chose him to replace the departing police chief. The first job seems a bit of a stretch. The second seems inconceivable. Coincidentally, the man who was just murdered was the main interviewer and decision-maker for both of Morgan’s positions.”
“Do you have a sense of why he wants you involved in the investigation?”
Gurney gazed far out through the French doors as though the answer might lie somewhere in the low pasture. “He spent his last half hour here making my involvement sound like the most reasonable thing in the world.”
She raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“He claims that this murder is the kind of case that would benefit from our combined strengths. He sees himself as a ‘possibility’ thinker and me as a ‘probability’ thinker.”
“Meaning what?”
“That he’s good at coming up with multiple scenarios for how and why a crime was committed, but lousy at estimating likelihoods and prioritizing investigative efforts.”
“Isn’t that ‘lousy’ part what a police chief ought to be good at?”
“Nothing about this situation is what it ought to be.”
“Then just say no. His inability to do his job isn’t your problem.”
“It’s not that simple.” His gaze drifted out the glass doors toward the low pasture. “The thing is . . . there’s an unspoken debt involved. About six years ago, right after Morgan and I got teamed up, we were doing follow-up interviews on a bodega homicide in the South Bronx projects. As we were leaving the apartment of a witness, we came face-to-face with three gangbangers coming out of the apartment directly across the hall—their meth factory, it turned out. They figured we’d come for them, and things got instantly insane—their Uzis against our Glocks. Morgan jumped back into the apartment we’d come out of, and I dove into the stairwell for cover. My wrist smashed against the railing, my weapon went flying down the stairs, with three Uzi maniacs coming at me. That’s when Morgan came charging out into the hall, between me and them. He had his Glock in one hand, his backup Sig in the other, and everybody starting shooting at once. Over a hundred shots fired in no time at all. Complete mayhem. When it got quiet, the three gangbangers were spread all over the tile floor, and Morgan was standing there, untouched.” He paused, looking pained. “I never told you about this because—”
“Because you never wanted to bring the frightening facts of your job into our home.” She paused. “So, the way you see it, he risked his life to save yours?”
“All I know is, he did what he did, the guys who were coming at me are dead, and I’m alive.”
She picked up her fork and began moving strands of her leftover pasta toward the center of her plate. “I’m wondering . . . do you see him as a self-absorbed, anxiety-driven womanizer? Or a fearless, self-sacrificing hero?”
“Couldn’t he be both? Fearless when confronted by a clear and present danger, but otherwise in a self-absorbed flight from his demons?”
“Or maybe the man you thought turned into a hero that day was still the same emotional mess—making a suicide attempt. One that happened to fail, fortunately for you.”
Gurney’s gaze settled on the shed diagram in the middle of the table. “That thought did occur to me. Maybe I just don’t want it to be true.”
“So your bottom line is that you’re alive because of what he did—regardless of what his motive may have been—and you owe him something in return?”
“I’m not sure what. But something, yes.” He turned up his palms, in lieu of an answer. “Anyway, I’ve agreed to go to Larchfield tomorrow morning. Maybe things will be clearer after that.”
He looked out toward the henhouse, then back at Madeleine. “I don’t particularly like Morgan. Never did. But I can’t just walk away. It’s not just about that shoot-out in the projects. There was a . . . an awful thing . . . that happened at the promotion ceremony where he got his gold detective’s shield. That’s a big moment in a cop’s life. It was for me, and I suspect it was ten times that for him. But then, at the end of the ceremony, his father came up to him. His big-deal father he was desperate to please. His father looks him in the eye, like he was a perp. No handshake, no congratulations. All the son of a bitch said was, ‘That gold shield is a family tradition. Don’t disgrace us.’”
Gurney felt a mixture of anger and sadness whenever that moment came to mind. That father, hard and cold. That son, longing for something he would never get.
Madeleine was watching him. When he met her gaze, he saw in it an understanding of what he was feeling, an understanding perhaps deeper than his own.
5
In keeping with the unpredictability of springtime in the mountains, the next morning was strangely balmy, the air soft and humid in the hazy early sunlight. As Gurney headed for his Outback, the sweet scent of the damp pasture grass jogged a childhood memory of the Bronx park where he’d spent so many summer hours, away from the tensions that had locked his parents’ marriage into a permanent state of unhappiness.
He entered the address of the Larchfield Police Department in his GPS and set out, leaving thoughts of that park and that marriage behind him.
His route took him through a landscape that was by turns picturesque and depressing. There were expanses of bucolic countryside—glorious green fields and red silos, meandering streams and century-old fieldstone walls, hillsides covered with wildflowers. And there were sad emblems of economic decline—the broken windows and creeper-covered walls of once-thriving dairy plants, barns and farmhouses gone to ruin, bleak villages where even the FOR SALE signs were disintegrating.
As he approached the foothills of the Adirondacks, the old pastures and maple groves were overtaken by thickets of pine and hemlock, the land gradually becoming more forested. The scattered businesses included small motels, campgrounds, gun stores, rod-and-bait stores. All appeared in need of refurbishing.