“Don’t be an asshole,” said Gurney.
“And what about Savannah Liston? Another Flores mole who outlived her usefulness?”
“It’s a workable hypothesis.”
“I thought she was the one who told you last week about a couple of girls she couldn’t get in touch with. If she was working with Flores, why would she do that?”
“Maybe he told her to. Maybe to give me the idea that I could trust her, confide in her. He might have realized that the investigation was going into high gear, and of course that would mean that we’d be talking to Mapleshade graduates. So it would only be a matter of time-and not much time at that-before we found out that a significant number of those graduates were unreachable. He might have been letting Savannah give me that fact a couple of days before we would have found out anyway-to create the impression that she was one of the good guys.”
“Do you think she knew… that she and Jillian both knew…?”
“Knew what was happening to the girls they were helping Flores recruit? I doubt it. They probably swallowed the basic sales pitch Hector was serving up-just introducing girls with special interests to men with special interests and earning a nice commission for their efforts. Of course, I don’t know any of that for sure. It’s possible that this whole case is one big trapdoor to hell, and I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on.”
“Shit, Gurney. Your total lack of faith in your own theories is really encouraging. What do you suggest for our next move?”
Gurney was saved from the discomfort of having no answer by the ring of his cell phone.
It was Robin Wigg. She began, as usual, without any preamble. “I have preliminary results from the lab tests on the boots found in the Liston residence. Captain Rodriguez has authorized me to discuss them with you, since they were performed at your suggestion. Is this a convenient time?”
“Absolutely. What have you got?”
“A lot of what you might expect, plus something you wouldn’t expect. Shall I start with that?” There was something about Wigg’s calm, businesslike contralto that Gurney had always liked. Regardless of the content of the words, the tone said that order could prevail over chaos.
“Please. The solutions are usually in the surprises.”
“Yes, I find that to be true. The surprise was the presence on the boots of a particular pheromone: methyl p-hydroxybenzoate. How knowledgeable are you in this area?”
“I skipped chemistry in high school. You’d better start at the beginning.”
“Actually, it’s pretty simple. Pheromones are glandular secretions meant to transmit information from one animal to another. Specific pheromones secreted by an individual animal may attract, warn, calm, or excite another individual. Methyl p-hydroxybenzoate is a powerful canine-attractant pheromone, and it was identified in high concentrations on both boots.”
“And the effect of that would be…?”
“Any dog, but especially a tracking dog, would easily and eagerly follow a trail created by a person wearing those boots.”
“How would someone get access to this stuff?”
“Some canine pheromones are available commercially for use in animal shelters and behavior-modification regimens. It could have been acquired that way or from direct contact with a bitch in estrus.”
“Interesting. Is there any unintentional way you can think of for a chemical like that to get on someone’s boots?”
“In the concentrations in which it was found? Short of an explosion in a pheromone-bottling facility, no.”
“Very interesting. Thank you, Sergeant. I’m going to put Jack Hardwick on the phone. I’d appreciate your repeating to him what you told me-in case he has questions I can’t answer.”
Hardwick had one question. “When you call it an attractant pheromone secreted by a bitch in estrus, what you mean is a female sex scent no male dog could ignore, right?”
He listened to her brief answer, ended the call, and handed the phone back to Gurney, looking excited. “Holy shit. The irresistible scent of a bitch in heat. What do you make of that, Sherlock?”
“It’s obvious that Flores wanted to be absolutely sure that the K-9 dog would follow that trail like an arrow. He may even have done some Internet research and discovered that the state tracking dogs are all males.”
“Which obviously means that he wanted us to find the machete.”
“No doubt about it,” said Gurney. “And he wanted us to find it fast. Both times.”
“So what’s the scenario? He lops off their heads, puts on his doctored boots, scurries out into the woods, ditches the machete, comes back into the crime scene, takes off the boots, and… then what?”
“In the case of Savannah, he just walks away, drives away, whatever,” said Gurney. “The Jillian situation is the impossible one.”
“Because of the video problem?”
“That, plus the question of where could he have gone after he came back to the cottage?”
“Plus the more basic question: Why would he bother to come back at all?”
Gurney smiled. “That’s the one little piece of it I think I understand. He came back to leave the boots in plain sight so the tracking dog would be excited by that scent in the cottage and immediately follow it out to the murder weapon. He wanted us to find it fast.”
“Which brings us back to the big why?”
“It also brings us back one more time to the machete itself. I’m telling you, Jack, figure out how it got to where you found it without anyone being caught on camera and everything else will fall in place.”
“You really think so?”
“You don’t?”
Hardwick shrugged. “Some people say follow the money. You, on the other hand, are big on what you call ‘discrepancies.’ So you say follow the piece that makes no sense.”
“And what do you say?”
“I say follow the thing that keeps coming up again and again. In this case the thing that keeps coming up again and again is sex. In fact, as far as I can see, everything in this weird-ass case, one way or another, is about sex. Edward Vallory. Tirana Zog. Jordan Ballston. Saul Steck. The whole Skard criminal enterprise. Scott Ashton’s psychiatric specialty. The possible photographs that have you scared shitless. Even the fucking trail to the machete turns out to be about sex-the overwhelming sexual power of a bitch in heat. You know what I think, ace? I think it’s time you and I visited the epicenter of this sexual earthquake-the Mapleshade Residential Academy.”
Chapter 71
He was unhappy with the details of the final solution, its crude departure from the elegant simplicity of a razor-sharp blade, a carefully discriminating blade. But he could see no clearer way to the end of the road. He was appalled by the imprecision of it all, the abandonment of the fine distinctions that were his forte, but had come to view it as unavoidable. The collateral casualties would simply be a necessary evil. He took what solace he could in reminding himself that his planned action was the very definition-the very heart and soul-of a just war. What he was about to do was undeniably necessary, and if an action was necessary, then its unavoidable consequences were justified. The deaths of innocent children could be regarded as regrettable. But who was to say they were innocent? No one at Mapleshade was truly innocent. One could argue that they weren’t even children. They might not be adults legally, but they weren’t children, either. Not in any normal sense of the term.
So the day had arrived; the event was upon him; the opportunity, not taken, would not come again. Discipline and objectivity must be his watchwords. It was no time for flinching. He must hang on to the reality of the thing.
Edward Vallory had seen that reality with perfect clarity.