“Is there any cause or approximate date of death?”
“She only got dug up this morning. But she’d definitely been in the ground awhile. Maybe a few months, which would put it back to the time of Hector’s disappearance.”
“What about the cause?”
“The ME hasn’t put it in writing yet, but based on my observation of the body I’d be willing to take a guess.”
Hardwick paused. Gurney clenched his teeth. He knew what was coming.
“I’d say her death might be related to the fact that her head was chopped off.”
Chapter 46
Arriving home well after midnight, Gurney got so little sleep that night that it hardly felt like sleep at all.
The next morning over coffee with Madeleine, he attributed his restlessness to his suspicions regarding “Jykynstyl” and to the growing intensity of the Perry case. Without saying so, he also attributed it to the metabolites of whatever chemical he’d been dosed with.
“You should have gone to the hospital.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Maybe you should go back to bed.”
“Too much going on. Besides, I’m too wound up to sleep.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Work.”
“You know it’s Sunday, right?”
“Right.” But he’d forgotten that it was. His confusion was scaring him. He had to do something to focus his mind on something concrete, a path to clarity, one foot after another.
“Maybe you should call Dichter’s office, ask if he can fit you in today.”
He shook his head. Dichter was their family doctor. Dr. Dichter. The silliness of it almost always made him smile, but not today.
“You said you might have been drugged. Are you taking that seriously enough? What kind of drug are you talking about?”
He wasn’t going to raise the specter of Rohypnol. Its sexual associations would trigger an explosion of questions and concerns he didn’t feel capable of discussing. “I’m not sure. I’m guessing it was something with blackout effects similar to alcohol.”
She gave him that assessing look of hers that made him feel naked.
“Whatever it was,” he said, “it’s wearing off.” He knew he was sounding too casual, or at least too eager to move to another subject.
“Maybe there’s something you should be taking to counteract it.”
He shook his head. “I’m sure my body’s natural detoxing process will take care of it. What I need in the meantime is something to focus on.” That thought led him directly back to the Perry case, which led him to the call he’d made to Hardwick the previous evening, which led him to the sudden realization that their discussion of Melpomene and Kiki Muller’s decomposing hand had caused him to forget why he’d called Hardwick in the first place.
A moment later he was back on the phone to him.
“Skard?” rasped Hardwick unhappily. “Yeah, that name came up in connection with Karnala Fashion. By the way, it’s Sunday fucking morning. How urgent is this?”
Nothing with Hardwick was easy. But if you played the game, you could make it less difficult. One way to play was to escalate the vulgarity.
“How about a shotgun-to-your-balls level of urgency?”
For a couple of seconds, Hardwick was quiet, as if considering the number of points to award for artfulness of expression. “Karnala Fashion turns out to be a complicated outfit, hard to pin down. It’s owned by another corporation, which is owned by another corporation, which is owned by another corporation in the Cayman Islands. Very hard to say what business they’re actually in. But there seems to be a Sardinian connection, and the Sardinian connection seems to be connected to the Skard family. The Skards are reputed to be very bad people.”
“Reputed to be?”
“I don’t mean to suggest there’s any doubt about it. There’s just no legal proof of it. According to our friends at Interpol, no member of the Skard family has ever been convicted of anything. Potential witnesses always change their minds. Or they disappear.”
“The Skards own Karnala Fashion?”
“Probably. Everything about them is probably this, probably that. They don’t put much on paper.”
“So what the hell is Karnala Fashion all about?”
“Nobody knows. We can’t find a single fabric supplier or clothing retailer who’s ever done business with them. They run ads for incredibly expensive women’s clothes, but we can’t find evidence that they actually sell them.”
“What do their representatives say about that?”
“We can’t find any representatives.”
“Jesus, Jack, who places the ads? Who pays for them?”
“It’s all done by e-mail.”
“E-mail from where?”
“Sometimes from the Cayman Islands. Sometimes from Sardinia.”
“But…”
“I know. It doesn’t make sense. It’s being pursued. We’re waiting for more stuff from Interpol. Also from the Italian police. Also from the Cayman Islands. It’s tricky, since nobody’s been convicted of anything and the missing girls aren’t officially missing. Even if they were, their connection to Karnala wouldn’t prove anything, and there’s nothing on paper connecting Karnala to the Skards. Reputed is as good as it gets. Legally, we’re in a minefield in a fog. Plus, thanks to the observations you shared with the DA, the whole case is now being run like a cover-your-ass panic attack.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that instead of a couple of guys in that minefield, we’ve got a dozen tripping over one another.”
“Admit it, Jack, you love it.”
“Fuck you.”
“Right. So I guess this wouldn’t be a good time to ask you for a favor.”
“Like what?” He was suddenly placid. Hardwick was strange that way. His reactions were backward, like a hyperactive kid being calmed by an upper. The best time to ask him for a favor was the exact time you’d think would be the worst, and vice versa. The same upside-down principle governed his response to risk. He tended to view it as a positive factor in any equation. Unlike most cops, who tend by nature to be hierarchical and conservative, Hardwick had the true maverick gene. He was lucky to be alive.
“It’s a rule breaker,” said Gurney, feeling for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours that he was on solid ground. Why hadn’t he thought of Hardwick sooner? “It might involve a little deviousness.”
“What is it?” The man sounded like he’d just been offered a surprise dessert.
“I need to get some prints lifted off a small glass and run against the FBI database.”
“Let me guess-you don’t want anyone to know why, you don’t want a case file opened, and you don’t want the inquiry to be traced back to you.”
“Something like that.”
“Where and when do I get this glass?”
“How about at Abelard’s in ten minutes?”
“Gurney, you’re a presumptuous dick.”
Chapter 47
After entrusting the glass to Hardwick in the tiny parking area in front of Abelard’s, Gurney was struck by the idea of continuing on to Tambury. Abelard’s, after all, was nearly halfway there, and the scene of the crime might have more to reveal to him. He also wanted to keep moving, keep the anxiety of the Jykynstyl business from enveloping him.
He thought about those outdoorsy aristocrats Marian Eliot and Melpomene, Melpomene rooting up the dirt behind the Muller shed, Kiki’s hand sticking out of the ground like a grungy garden glove. And Carl. Christmas Carl. Carl who might very well end up in the frame for his wife’s murder. Of course, the fact that her head was cut off would point the finger at Hector. But if Carl were clever…
Had he discovered her affair with Hector? And decided to kill her the way Hector had killed Jillian Perry? Conceivable but unlikely. If Carl were guilty, that would make Kiki’s murder a tangent off the main course of the Mapleshade business. It would also mean that Carl had been furious enough to kill his wife, rational enough to mimic Hector’s MO, and foolish enough to bury her in a shallow grave in his own backyard. Gurney had seen stranger sequences of events, but that didn’t make this scenario feel any more credible.