“Thank you, Jennifer. You’ve been extremely helpful.”
It might not be Jennifer Stillman’s job to judge why people wanted what they wanted, but it was a big part of Gurney’s job. Understanding motivations could make all the difference, and in this instance a weird one came to mind: One reason a person might want total video coverage of an event was security. Either because they believed that the deterrent effect of multiple cameras in continuous recording mode would keep some feared event from occurring or because they wanted to have an indisputable record of anything that did occur.
And then there was the question of who it was that wanted all those cameras running. It hadn’t escaped Gurney’s notice that the request had been positioned to Ms. Stillman as coming from Jillian, but that Jillian herself hadn’t been present, and the request had been “passed along” by Ashton. So it might have been his idea and he had chosen to present it as hers. But why would he do that? What difference did it make whose idea it was?
The possibility that he or she had been motivated by the security aspect of the cameras-the possibility that at least one of them, maybe both, had reason to be apprehensive about what might happen that day-was intriguing.
Their most likely focus of concern would have been Flores, who reportedly had been acting strangely. Maybe the camera emphasis had come from Jillian, just as Ashton had said. Maybe she had reasons to fear Flores. After all, her cell records for the weeks preceding the murder indicated numerous text messages from Flores’s phone-including the final one, the only one that hadn’t been deleted: FOR ALL THE REASONS I HAVE WRITTEN. EDWARD VALLORY. In light of the prologue to Vallory’s play, that message could certainly be interpreted as a threat. So maybe she went to see him in the cottage to discuss something a lot less pleasant than a wedding toast.
When Gurney was engaged in stitching together the pieces of evidence, interpretation, hearsay, and logical leaps that constituted his understanding of a crime, the process filled his mind completely, obliterating his sense of time and place. Thus, when he looked at the clock on the den bookcase and saw that it was 5:05 P.M., it both surprised him and didn’t surprise him-like the stiffness in his legs when he stood up.
Madeleine was still out. Perhaps he should get something started for dinner, or at least check to see if she’d left anything on the countertop that needed to go into the oven. He was heading in that direction when the phone on his desk rang and brought him back. The caller ID said Jack Hardwick.
“Golly, Supercop, you’ve got one hell of a creepy friend!”
“Meaning?”
“Hope you weren’t near a school yard with this guy.”
Gurney had a sinking feeling about where this was heading. “The hell are you talking about, Jack?”
“Touchy, touchy. This sweetheart a close buddy of yours?”
“Enough bullshit. What’s this about?”
“The gentleman you were drinking with? Whose glass you walked off with? Whose prints you asked me to run? Sound familiar, Sherlock?”
“What did you find out?”
“Quite a bit.”
“Jack…”
“I found out that his name is Saul Steck. Professional name Paul Starbuck.”
“His profession being…?”
“Nothing currently. At least nothing on record. Until fifteen years ago he was a Hollywood actor on the come. TV commercials, couple of movies.” Hardwick was in arch storyteller mode, with a dramatic pause after each sentence. “Then he had a little problem.”
“Jack, can we move this along? What little problem?”
“Accused of raping an underage girl. Once that hit the media, other victims started coming out of the woodwork. Saul-Paul was indicted on a bunch of rape and molestation charges. Fond of drugging fourteen-year-old girls. Took a lot of very explicit pictures. Ended his acting career. Could have gone to prison for the rest of his life. Too bad he didn’t. Best place for the little scumbag. However, family money bought enough expert medical testimony to get him committed to a psych hospital, from which he was quietly released five years ago. Dropped off the radar screen. Current address unknown. Except maybe by you? I mean, you got that cute little glass somewhere, right?”
Chapter 49
Gurney stood at the French doors facing the lavender remnants of a spectacular sunset that he hadn’t really noticed, trying to assimilate the latest aftershock of the Jykynstyl earthquake.
Information. He needed information. What did he need to find out first? He should grab a pad and start listing the questions, prioritizing. An obvious one came immediately to mind: Who owned the brownstone?
How to pursue the question was not so obvious.
The old catch-22 again. To disentangle himself from the snare, he needed to know whose snare it was. But pursuing that question naïvely, without any idea what the answer might be, could get him more deeply entangled. Unanswered questions were threatening to make other questions unanswerable.
“Hello!”
It was Madeleine’s voice. Like a voice that awakens you in the morning, jarring you into the room, into the specific day of the week.
He turned toward the little hall that led from the kitchen to the mudroom. “Is that you?” he asked. Of course it was. An inane question. When she didn’t answer, he asked it again, louder.
She responded by appearing in the kitchen doorway, frowning at him.
“Did you just come in?” he asked.
“No, I’ve been standing in the mudroom all afternoon. What kind of question is that?”
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“And yet,” she said cheerily, “here I am.”
“Yes,” he said. “Here you are.”
“Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I’m fine. Maybe a little hungry.”
She glanced at a bowl on the sideboard. “The scallops should be defrosted by now. Do you want to sauté them while I get the water on for the rice?”
“Sure.” He was hoping that the simple task might provide at least a partial escape from the Saul-Paul whirlpool that was engulfing his mind.
He sautéed the scallops in olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, and capers. Madeleine boiled some basmati rice and made a salad of oranges, avocados, and diced red onions. He was having a hell of a time staying focused, staying in the room, staying in the present. Fond of drugging fourteen-year-old girls. Took a lot of very explicit pictures.
Halfway through dinner he realized that Madeleine had been describing a hike she’d taken that afternoon through the meandering trails that linked their 50 acres with their neighbor’s 350. Hardly a word had registered with him. He smiled gamely and made a belated effort to listen.
“… amazingly intense green, even in the shade. And underneath the blanket of ferns there were the smallest purple flowers you can imagine.” As she spoke, there was a light in her eyes brighter than any light in the room. “Almost microscopic. Like the teeniest blue-and-purple snowflakes.”
Blue-and-purple snowflakes? Mother of God! The tension, the incongruity, the gap he felt between her elation and his anxiety brought him close to groaning aloud. Her field of perfect emerald ferns and his own nightmare of poisonous thorns. Her lively honesty and his… his what?
His encounter with the devil?
Get a grip, Gurney. Get a grip. What the hell are you so afraid of?
The answer only darkened the pit and greased the walls.
You’re afraid of yourself. Afraid of what you might have done.
He sat in a kind of emotional paralysis through the rest of dinner, trying to eat enough to conceal the fact that he wasn’t really eating, pretending to appreciate Madeleine’s descriptions of her outing. But the more she enthused over the beauty of the black-eyed Susans, the perfume in the air, the azure of the wild asters, the more isolated, dislocated, and crazy he felt. He became aware that Madeleine had stopped talking. She was watching him with concern. He wondered if she’d asked him something and was waiting for an answer. He didn’t want to admit how distracted he was, or why.