“You think the DA in Florida is going to give Ballston a pass to make Sheridan’s life easier?” His tone made it plain he considered this idea absurd.
“I’m not talking about a pass. I’m talking about Ballston being made to understand that lethal injection is an absolute certainty for him unless he cooperates fully. And immediately.”
“And if he cooperates?”
“If he does-fully, truthfully, with no reservations-then maybe other outcomes could be considered.”
“That’s a tough sell.” Stimmel sounded like if he were the Florida DA, it would be an impossible sell.
“The fact is,” said Gurney, “getting Ballston to talk may be our only shot.”
“Our only shot at what?”
“A bunch of girls are missing. Unless we crack Ballston, I doubt we’ll ever find a single one of them alive.”
The rapid-fire pressures of the day caught up with Gurney on the second leg of the flight home, and his brain began shutting down. With the jet engines droning in his ears like a formless white noise, loosening his grip on the present, he drifted through unpleasant scenes and disjointed moments that hadn’t come to mind in over a decade: the visits he made to Florida after his parents moved from the Bronx to a rented bungalow in Magnolia, a little town that seemed to be the mother lode of bleakness and decay; a brown palmetto bug the size of a mouse, scuttling under the leafy detritus on the bungalow porch; tap water that tasted like recycled sewage but that his parents insisted had no taste at all; the times when his mother drew him aside to complain with tearful bitterness about her marriage, about his father, about his father’s selfishness, about her migraines, about her lack of sexual satisfaction.
Disturbing dreams, dark memories, and increasing dehydration through the remainder of the flight put Gurney in a state of anxious depression. As soon as he got off the plane in Albany, he bought a liter bottle of water at the inflated airport price and drank half of it on the way to the bathroom. In the relatively roomy wheelchair-accessible stall, he removed his chic jeans, polo shirt, and moccasins. He opened the Giacomo Emporium box he’d been carrying that contained his own original clothes and put them on. Then he put the new clothes into the box, and when he left the stall, he tossed the box into the garbage bin. He went to the basin and rinsed the gel out of his hair. He dried it roughly with a paper towel and looked at himself in the mirror, reassuring himself that he was again himself.
It was exactly 6:00 P.M., according to the parking booth’s clock, as he paid the twelve-dollar fee and the striped yellow barrier arm rose to let him pass. He headed for I-88 West with the late sun glaring through his windshield.
By the time he got to the exit for the county route that led from the interstate down through the northern Catskills to Walnut Crossing, an hour had passed; he’d finished his liter of water and was feeling better. It always surprised him that such a simple thing-you couldn’t get much simpler than water-could have such power to calm his thoughts. His emotional restoration gradually continued, and by the time he reached the little road that meandered up through the hills to his farmhouse, he was feeling close to normal.
He walked into the kitchen just as Madeleine was removing a roasting pan from the oven. She laid it on top of the stove, glanced at him with raised eyebrows, and said with a bit more sarcasm than surprise, “This is a shock.”
“Nice to see you, too.”
“Are you interested in having dinner?”
“I told you in the note I left for you this morning that I’d be home for dinner, and here I am.”
“Congratulations,” she said, getting a second dinner plate out of an overhead cabinet and laying it next to the one already on the countertop.
He gave her a narrow-eyed look. “Maybe we ought to try this again? Should I go out and come back in?”
She returned an extended parody of his look, then softened. “No. You’re right. You’re here. Get out another knife and fork, and let’s eat. I’m hungry.”
They filled their plates from the pan of roasted vegetables and chicken thighs and carried them to the round table by the French doors.
“I think it’s warm enough to open them,” she said-which he did.
As they sat down, a bath of sweetly fragrant air washed over them. Madeleine closed her eyes, a slow-motion smile wrinkling her cheeks. In the stillness Gurney thought he could hear the faint, soft cooing of mourning doves from the trees beyond the pasture.
“Lovely, lovely, lovely,” Madeleine half whispered. Then she sighed happily, opened her eyes, and began to eat.
At least a minute passed before she spoke again. “So tell me about your day,” she said, eyeing a parsnip on the tip of her fork.
He thought about it, frowning.
She waited, watching him.
He placed his elbows on the table, interlocking his fingers in front of his chin. “My day. Well. The highlight was the point at which the psychopath dissolved into giggles. A funny image occurred to him. An image involving two women he had raped, tortured, and decapitated.”
She studied his face, her lips tightening.
After a while he added, “So that’s the kind of day it was.”
“Did you accomplish what you set out to accomplish?”
He rubbed the knuckle of his forefinger slowly across his lips. “I think so.”
“Does that mean you’ve solved the Perry case?”
“I think I have part of the solution.”
“Good for you.”
A long silence passed between them.
Madeleine stood, picked up their plates, then the knives and forks. “She called today.”
“Who?”
“Your client.”
“Val Perry? You spoke to her?”
“She said that she was returning your call, that she had your home phone number with her but not your cell number.”
“And?”
“And she wanted you to know that three thousand dollars is not an amount of money you need to bother her about. ‘He should spend whatever the hell he needs to spend to find Hector Flores.’ That’s a quote. Sounds like an ideal client.” She let the dishes clatter into the sink. “What more could you ask for? Oh, by the way, speaking of decapitation…”
“Speaking of what?”
“The man in Florida you mentioned who decapitates people-it just reminded me to ask you about that doll.”
“Doll?”
“The one upstairs.”
“Upstairs?”
“What is this, the echo game?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m asking you about the doll on the bed in my sewing room.”
He shook his head, turned up his palms in bafflement.
There was a flicker of concern in her eyes. “The doll. The broken doll. On the bed. You don’t know anything about it?”
“You mean like a little girl’s doll?”
Her voice rose in alarm. “Yes, David! A little girl’s doll!”
He stood and walked quickly to the hall stairs, took two at a time, and in a matter of seconds was standing in the doorway of the spare bedroom Madeleine used for her needlework. The dying dusk threw only a dim gray light across the double bed. He flipped the wall switch, and a bright bedside lamp provided all the illumination he needed.
Propped against one of the pillows was an ordinary doll in a sitting position, unclothed-ordinary except for the fact that the head had been removed and was placed on the bedspread a few feet from the body, facing it.
Chapter 62
The dream was coming apart, cracking like the compartments of a brittle carton, no longer able to keep its unruly contents firmly in place.
Each night his scimitar victory over Salome was less clear, less certain. It was like an old-time television transmission being interrupted by a program on an adjoining frequency. Competing voices broke back and forth across each other. Images of Salome dancing were replaced in vivid flashes by those of another dancer.