Chapter 17
In the past four months, he’d hardly thought of the other one at all-the one just before the Perry bitch, the one of little importance by comparison, the overshadowed one, the one no one had discovered yet, the one whose fame was yet to come-the one whose elimination was, in part, a matter of convenience. Some might say entirely a matter of convenience, but they would be wrong. Her end was well deserved, for all the reasons that damned her kind:
the stain of Eve,
rotten heart,
rutting heart,
heart of a slut,
a slut at heart,
sweat on the upper lip,
grunts of a pig,
horrid gasps,
lips parting,
lascivious lips, devouring lips,
wet tongue,
slithering serpent,
enveloping legs,
slippery skin,
vile fluids,
slime of a snail.
Wiped clean by death,
evaporated by death,
damp limbs dried by death,
purification by desiccation,
dry as dust.
Harmless as a mummy.
Vaya con Dios!
He smiled. He must remember to think of her more often-to keep her death alive.
Chapter 18
By 10:00 A.M., Gurney had e-mailed Val Perry a memo of agreement and called three numbers she’d given him for Scott Ashton-his home number, personal cell number, and the Mapleshade Residential Academy number-in an effort to arrange a meeting. He’d left voice-mail messages at the first two and a live message at the third, with an assistant who identified herself only as Ms. Liston.
At 10:30 Ashton called him back, said he’d gotten all three messages, plus one from Val Perry explaining Gurney’s role. “She said you’d want to speak to me.”
Ashton’s voice was familiar from the video, but richer and softer on the phone, impersonally warm, like an advertising voice for an expensive product-quite suitable for a top-shelf psychiatrist, thought Gurney.
“That’s right, sir,” he said. “As soon as it’s convenient for you.”
“Today?”
“Today would be ideal.”
“The academy at noon or my home at two. Your choice.”
Gurney chose the latter. If he started out for Tambury immediately, he’d have time to drive around, get a sense of the area, Ashton’s road in particular, maybe talk to a neighbor or two. He went to the table, got the BCI interview list that Hardwick had provided, and made a pencil dot next to each name with a Badger Lane address. From the same pile, he chose the folder marked “Interview Summaries” and headed for his car.
The village of Tambury owed its sleepy, secluded quality in part to having grown up around an intersection of two nineteenth-century roads that had been bypassed by newer routes, a circumstance that usually produces an economic decline. However, Tambury’s location in a high open valley on the northern edge of the mountains with postcard views in every direction saved it. The combination of out-of-the-way peace and great beauty made it an attractive location for wealthy retirees and second-home owners.
But not all the population fit that description. Calvin Harlen’s weed-choked shambles of a former dairy farm sat at the corner of Higgles Road and Badger Lane. It was just past noon when the crisp librarian’s voice of Gurney’s GPS delivered him to this final segment of his hour-and-a-quarter drive from Walnut Crossing. He pulled over onto the northbound shoulder of Higgles Road and eyed the dilapidated property, whose most striking feature was a ten-foot-high mountain of manure, overgrown with monstrous weeds, next to a barn that was leaning precipitously toward it. On the far side of the barn, sinking into a field of waist-high scrub, a haphazard line of rusting cars was punctuated by a yellow school-bus carcass with no wheels.
Gurney opened his folder of interview summaries and pulled the appropriate one to the top. He read:
Calvin Harlen. Age 39. Divorced. Self-employed, odd jobs (home repair, lawn mowing, snowplowing, seasonal deer cutting, taxidermy). General maintenance work for Scott Ashton until arrival of Hector Flores, who took over his jobs. Claims he had “unwritten contract” with Ashton that Ashton broke. Claims (without supporting facts) that Flores was illegal alien, gay, HIV-positive, crack addict. Referred to Flores as a “filthy spic,” Ashton as a “lying piece of shit,” Jillian Perry as a “snotty little cunt,” and Kiki Muller as a “spic-fucking whore.” No knowledge of the homicide, related events, location of the suspect. Claims he was working alone in his barn the afternoon of the homicide.
Subject has low credibility. Unstable. Record of multiple arrests over 20-year period, for bad checks, domestic violence, drunk and disorderly, harassment, menacing, assault. (See Unified Criminal Record form attached.)
Gurney closed the folder, put it on the passenger seat. Apparently Calvin Harlen’s life had been a prolonged audition for White-Trash Poster Boy.
He got out of the car, locked it, and walked across the trafficless road to a rutted expanse of dirt that served as a kind of driveway onto the property. It forked into two loosely defined directions, separated by a triangle of stunted grass: one toward the manure pile and barn on the right, the other on the left toward a ramshackle two-story farmhouse whose last paint job was so many decades in the past that the patches of paint on the rotting wood no longer had a definable color. The porch overhang was supported by a few four-by-four posts of more recent vintage than the house but far from new. On one of the posts was a plywood sign advertising DEER CUTING in red, dripping, hand-painted letters.
From inside the house came an eruption of the frantic barking of at least two large-sounding dogs. Gurney waited to see if the commotion would bring someone to the door.
It brought someone out of the barn, or at least out from someplace behind the manure pile-a thin, weathered man with a shaved head, holding what appeared to be either a very fine screwdriver or an ice pick.
“You lose something?” He was smirking as though the question were a clever joke.
“You asking me if I lost something?” said Gurney.
“You say you’re lost?”
Whatever the game was, the thin man seemed to be enjoying it.
Gurney wanted to knock him off balance, make him wonder what the game was.
“I know some people with dogs,” said Gurney. “Right kind of dog, you can make a lot of money. Wrong kind, you’re out of luck.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
It took Gurney a second or two-and the sudden end of the barking in the house-to realize whom the thin man had shouted at.
The situation had the potential for becoming unsafe. Gurney knew he still had the option of walking away, but he wanted to stay, had a lunatic urge to spar with the lunatic. He began studying the ground around him. After a while he picked up a small oval stone about the size of a robin’s egg. He massaged it slowly between his palms as if to warm it, flipped it in the air like a coin, caught and enclosed it in his right fist.