“The would-be heiress—if Kay stays in prison.”
“Which is becoming less likely each passing day. This turn of events must be having an interesting effect on Miss Alyssa, yes? You care to share your insights?”
Gurney smiled. “I’ll do better than that. I have a recording. Might not be the greatest quality, but you’ll get the gist.”
“ ‘Fuck me and die’? Did she really say ‘Fuck me and die’?” Esti was leaning toward the recorder as they finished listening for the second time to the conversation at Venus Lake. “What was that all about?”
“Probably the name of her favorite rock band,” suggested Hardwick.
“It could be a threat,” said Esti.
“Or an invitation,” said Hardwick. “You were there, Davey boy. What’d it sound like to you?”
“Like everything else she said and did—a combination of cartoon seduction and calculated bullshit.”
Hardwick raised an eyebrow. “Sounds to me like a nasty little kid trying to shock the grown-ups. That FMAD T-shirt you described makes her seem kind of pathetic. Like inside she’s about twelve.”
“The T-shirt may have been harmless,” replied Gurney, “but her eyes weren’t.”
Esti jumped in. “Maybe the shirt wasn’t so harmless either. Suppose it was a literal statement of fact.”
Hardwick ratcheted up his skeptical look. “What fact?”
“Maybe there’s more than one ‘black widow’ in this case.”
“You mean ‘Fuck me and die’ really means ‘Fuck me and I’ll kill you’? That’s clever, but I don’t get it. How does it—”
“She told Klemper her father coerced her into having sex with him. We have no proof of it, but it could be true.”
“So you’re saying that Alyssa killed her father as payback?”
“It’s not impossible. And if she could rope a horny jerk like Klemper into bending the investigation to put Kay in the frame, the ‘payback’ would also include her ending up with her father’s estate. That’s two major motives—revenge and money.”
Hardwick looked at Gurney. “What do you think, ace?”
“I’m sure Alyssa is guilty of something. She may have ‘persuaded’ or blackmailed Klemper into tailoring the evidence to make sure Kay was convicted. Or she may have masterminded the whole damn thing—the murder as well as the frame.”
“Premeditated murder? You think she’s capable of that?”
“There’s something scary in those glittery blue eyes. But I have a hard time seeing her handling the executional details. Someone else smashed Mary’s head on the side of that bathtub and hammered the nails into Fat Gus.”
“You’re saying she hired a pro?”
“I’m saying if she was the prime mover behind the three murders, she would’ve needed help—but none of that answers the basic question that’s been eating at me from the beginning: Why Carl’s mother? It really doesn’t make sense.”
Hardwick was drumming his fingertips on the table. “Neither does the Gus hit. Not unless you buy Donny Angel’s story about Gus and Carl being hit by a guy they targeted. But if you buy that, and you also buy Alyssa as the prime mover, then you’re stuck with the conclusion that she must have been Carl’s original target—which never felt right to me, and it still doesn’t.”
“But it would give her a third motive,” said Esti.
As Gurney considered the Angelidis scenario one more time, with Alyssa in the unnamed target position, it touched a nerve.
“What is it?” asked Esti, eyeing him curiously.
“Nothing very logical. In fact, nothing logical at all. Just a feeling and an image.” He got up and went into the den to get that troubling photo of Carl Spalter from the case file. When he returned, he laid it on the table between Hardwick and Esti.
Hardwick stared at it, his expression tightening.
“I saw that once before,” said Esti. “It’s hard to look at for very long.”
Hardwick glanced up at Gurney, who was still standing. “You have some point you want to make with this?”
“Like I said, nothing logical. Just an off-the-wall question.”
“Christ, Davey boy, the suspense is killing me. Speak.”
“Might that be the look of a man who’s waiting to die—who knows he’s about to die—as the final, twisted result of taking out a murder contract on his own child?”
They all stared at the photograph.
No one said anything for a while.
Hardwick finally leaned back in his chair and let out one of his barking laughs. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, wouldn’t that be the ultimate fucking karma!”
Chapter 32. Another Missing Player
Hardwick suggested they listen to the Venus Lake recording one more time, which they did. He seemed especially interested in the section in which Alyssa claimed that Klemper had blackmailed her into having sex with him. “Beautiful! I love it! That fuckhead is done, cooked, finished!”
Now Gurney looked skeptical. “The recording of Alyssa won’t be enough by itself. You heard her—she was all over the place, not exactly sounding like a solid citizen. You’ll need a sworn statement from her—listing dates, places, details—which she’s unlikely to supply. Because she’s almost certainly lying. If anyone blackmailed anyone, I’m pretty sure it was the other way around. So she won’t want—”
Esti broke in. “What do you mean, the other way around?”
“Suppose Alyssa seduced Klemper while he was still conducting an objective investigation of the original shooting. Suppose she video-recorded their … encounter. And suppose the price she demanded for keeping the recording out of the hands of the state police was Klemper’s help in making the case turn out the way she wanted.”
“It doesn’t matter how they ended up in bed,” said Hardwick. “Blackmail, seduction, whatever. Who gives a shit who was blackmailing who? Fucking a potential suspect is fucking a potential suspect. Klemper’s career is going down the toilet.”
Gurney sat back. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“And the other way is … what?”
“It’s a question of priorities. One way, we can pressure Alyssa to sink Klemper. The other way, we can pressure Klemper to sink Alyssa.”
Esti looked interested. “You like number two better, right?”
Before Gurney could answer, Hardwick interjected, “You think Alyssa’s the chief manipulator, but a minute ago you said she was all over the place, sounded less than solid—and I agree. She called you, she set up the meeting with you, but in that recording she comes across as pretty erratic—like she had no idea where the conversation might go, like she had no plan. This is a master manipulator?”
Esti spoke up with a knowing smile. “Maybe an overconfident manipulator. But she definitely had a plan.”
“What plan?”
“Probably the same as she had for Klemper. Her plan today was to get Dave into bed, get it all on a hidden camera, and get him to change his approach to the case.”
“Dave’s retired. Pension guaranteed. Doesn’t have a career to lose,” said Hardwick. “Where’s the leverage?”
“He has a wife.” She looked at Gurney. “A video of you in bed with a nineteen-year-old could create a problem, right?”
That didn’t require an answer.
Esti went on. “That was Alyssa’s Plan A. When that little sweetheart makes it clear that she’s available, I doubt many men turn her down. Dave not wanting to play her game probably came as a big surprise. She had no Plan B.”
Hardwick shot a nasty grin in Gurney’s direction. “Saint David here is full of surprises. But tell me something, ace. Why did she admit to you that she had sex with Klemper at all? Why not just deny the whole thing?”