“What about the bullet in the teacup?”
“Easiest thing in the world. Ashton could have fired the bullet himself, hid the gun, reported it stolen. Perfectly believable that the crazy, ungrateful Mexican would have stolen the doctor’s expensive rifle.”
“Hold on a second. On that videotape, at the very beginning, before the reception starts, Ashton went to the cottage to talk to Flores. When he knocked on the door, the audio picked up a very low ‘Esta abierto.’ If there was no Hector Flores in there, who said that?”
“Obviously Ashton could have said it himself in a muffled voice. His back was to the camera.”
“But the girls Hector spoke to at Mapleshade…”
“The girls he supposedly spoke to are all conveniently dead or missing. So how do we know he ever spoke to anyone? There’s no one available who can actually say she saw him face-to-face. Isn’t that a pretty goddamn strange thing all by itself?”
They looked at each other, then at the computer screen, where Ashton could be seen speaking briefly to two of the girls, pointing instructively to various parts of the chapel area. He looked as relaxed and commanding as the winning general on the day the enemy surrendered.
Hardwick shook his head. “You really believe that Ashton came up with this incredibly elaborate scheme-that he invented this mythical person and managed to nurture the fiction for three years-just so he’d have someone to blame in case he decided someday to get married and murder his wife? Doesn’t that sound a little ridiculous?”
“Put that way, it sounds totally ridiculous. But suppose he had another reason for inventing Hector?”
“What reason?”
“I don’t know. A bigger reason. A more practical reason.”
“Seems awfully shaky. And what about the Skard business? Wasn’t that all based on the theory that one of the Skard brothers, probably Leonardo, was masquerading as Hector and talking unrepentant Mapleshade girls into leaving home for money and thrills after graduation? If there was no Hector, what happens to that whole sex-slavery scenario?”
“I don’t know.” It was a crucial question, thought Gurney. What sense did any of their theories make if they depended on the idea that Leonardo Skard was operating in the guise of Hector Flores-if no one called Hector Flores had ever existed?
Chapter 77
“By the way,” said Gurney, “you happen to have your weapon on you?”
“Always,” said Hardwick. “My ankle would feel naked without its little holster. In my humble opinion, bullets sometimes rank right up there with brains as problem solvers. Why do you ask? You intend to make a dramatic move?”
“No dramatic move just yet. We need to be a lot surer about what’s going on.”
“You sounded damn sure of yourself a minute ago.”
Gurney made a face. “All I’m sure of is that my version of the Perry murder is possible. Or that it’s not impossible. Scott Ashton could have killed Jillian Perry. Could have. But it needs more digging, more facts. Right now there’s zero evidence and zero motive. We’ve got nothing but speculation on my part, a logical exercise.”
“But what if-”
Hardwick’s question was cut short by the sound of the heavy chapel door on the floor below opening and shutting, followed by a sharp metallic click. They both leaned reflexively toward the shadowy stairs beyond the doorway of the office and listened for footsteps.
A minute later Scott Ashton emerged from the top of the stone stairwell and entered the office, moving with the same air of power and control they’d witnessed on the screen. He sank into the plushly upholstered chair behind his desk and removed his Bluetooth earpiece and dropped it in the top drawer. He brought his hands together on the massive black desktop, slowly interlocking the fingers-except for the thumbs which he held parallel to each other as if to facilitate a close comparison between them. It was a comparison that seemed to interest him. After smiling for some time at his private thoughts, he separated his hands, turning up the palms with the fingers loosely splayed in a queerly insouciant gesture.
Then he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small-caliber pistol. The action was casual-so similar to taking out a pack of cigarettes that, for a second, Gurney thought that that was what Ashton had done.
With an almost sleepy motion, he pointed the little semiautomatic, a.25-caliber Beretta, at a point somewhere between Gurney and Hardwick, but his eyes were fixed on Hardwick.
“Do me a favor, please. Put your hands on the arms of your chair. Right now, please. Thank you. Now, remaining seated just as you are, raise your feet slowly off the floor. Thank you. I really appreciate your cooperation. Raise them higher. Thank you. Now please extend your legs forward, toward my desk. Keep extending them until you can rest your feet on the desktop. Thank you. That’s very good, very accommodating.”
Hardwick followed all these instructions with the relaxed seriousness of a man listening to a yoga instructor. Once his feet were propped up on the desk, Ashton leaned across from his side of it, reached under Hardwick’s right cuff, and removed a Kel-Tec P-32 from its holster. He looked it over, hefted it in his hand, then placed it in the top desk drawer.
He sat again and smiled. “Ah, yes. Much better. Too many armed people in one room is a tragedy waiting to happen. Please, Detective, feel free to put your feet down. I think we can all relax, now that the order of things is clear.”
Ashton looked at one of them and then at the other in an idle, amused way. “I must say it’s turning into an absolutely fascinating day. So many… developments. And you, Detective Gurney, you’ve really had that little mind of yours in overdrive.” Ashton’s voice was purring with honeyed sarcasm. “Quite a lurid plot you’ve described. Sounds like a movie pitch. Scott Ashton, famous psychiatrist, murdered his wife in the presence of two hundred wedding guests. And all he had to tell her was, ‘Shut your eyes tight.’ There never was a Hector Flores. The bloody machete was a clever ruse. There was a cleaver in his pocket. A pseudo-accidental dive into the roses. A clever switch of suits in the bathroom. And so forth and so on. An ingenious conspiracy uncovered. A sensational murder case solved. Merchants of perversion exposed. The dead get their day of justice. The living live happily ever after. Is that about the size and shape of it?”
If he expected a reaction of shock or fear at his ability to summarize Gurney’s conversation with Hardwick, he was disappointed. One of Gurney’s strengths when blindsided was to react mildly but in a tone that was slightly off, a tone that might be appropriate to more secure circumstances. That’s what he did now.
“That pretty much sums it up,” he said simply. He showed no surprise that while Ashton was downstairs, he’d been listening in on their conversation-probably via a transmission to his earpiece from a hidden microphone. No-it was definitely a transmission to the earpiece. Gurney secretly kicked himself for not having noted the anomaly of Ashton’s speaking on a handheld cell phone earlier on the chapel floor-indicating that his earpiece at that moment was being used for something else. It was painful that something so obvious had escaped his notice, but that kind of pain he would never show.