The door opened before Rodriguez got to it. Gerson stepped in with a tinge of alarm on her lean face, effectively blocking his way. “Excuse me, sir, an urgent call.”
“Not now,” he muttered vaguely. “Maybe Anderson… or someone…”
“Sir, it’s an emergency. Another Mapleshade-related homicide.”
Rodriguez stared at her. “What?”
“A homicide-”
“Who?”
“A girl by the name of Savannah Liston.”
It seemed to take a few seconds for the news to register-as though he were listening to a translation. “Right,” he said finally, and followed her out of the room.
When he returned five minutes later, the vague speculations that had been drifting around the table in his absence were replaced by an eager attentiveness.
“Okay. Everyone is here who needs to be here,” he announced. “I’m only going to go through this once, so I suggest you take notes.”
Anderson and Blatt pulled out small identical notebooks and pens. Wigg’s fingers were poised over her laptop keys.
“That was Tambury police chief Burt Luntz. He called from his present location, a bungalow rented by Savannah Liston, an employee of Mapleshade.” There was strength and purpose in the captain’s voice, as though the task of passing along information had put him, at least temporarily, on solid ground. “At approximately five o’clock this morning, Chief Luntz received a phone call at his home. In what sounded to Luntz like a Spanish accent, all the caller said was, ‘Seventy-eight Buena Vista, for all the reasons I have written.’ When Luntz asked the caller for his name, his response was ‘Edward Vallory calls me the Spanish Gardener.’ At that point the caller hung up.”
Anderson frowned at his watch. “This was at five A.M.-ten hours ago-and we’re just hearing about it now?”
“Unfortunately, the call didn’t set off an alarm with Luntz. He just assumed it was a wrong number or the guy was drunk or maybe both. He’s not privy to the details of our investigation, so the Edward Vallory references meant nothing to him. Then, about half an hour ago, he got a call from a Dr. Lazarus at Mapleshade saying that they had an employee, normally responsible, who didn’t show up for work today, wasn’t answering her phone, and-considering all the crazy things going on-could Luntz send one of his local patrol cars by her house to make sure everything was all right? Then he gives the address as Seventy-eight Buena Vista Trail, which rings a bell, so Luntz drives over there himself.”
Kline was leaning forward in his chair like a sprinter on his mark. “And finds Savannah Liston dead?”
“He finds the back door unlocked, with Liston at the kitchen table. Same configuration as Jillian Perry.”
“Exactly the same?” asked Gurney.
“Apparently.”
“Where is Luntz now?” asked Kline.
“In the kitchen, with some Tambury uniforms on the way to set up a perimeter and secure the scene. He’s already gone through the house-lightly, just to verify that no one else is present. Hasn’t touched anything.”
“Did he say if he noticed anything odd?” asked Gurney.
“One thing. A pair of boots by the door. The kind you slip on over your shoes. Sound familiar?”
“The boots again. Jesus. There’s something about the boots.” Gurney’s tone held Rodriguez’s attention. “Captain, I know it’s not my place to… to try to influence your allocation of resources, but… may I make a suggestion?”
“Go ahead.”
“I would recommend that you get those boots to your lab people immediately, keep them here all night if you have to, and have them run every goddamn chemical-recognition test they can.”
“Looking for what?”
“I don’t know.”
Rodriguez made a face, but not as bad a one as Gurney had feared. “Based on nothing, that’s a hell of a shot in the dark, Gurney.”
“The boots have shown up twice. Before they show up again, I’d like to know why.”
Chapter 69
Anderson, Hardwick, and Blatt were dispatched to the Buena Vista scene, along with an evidence team selected by Sergeant Wigg, and a K-9 team. The ME’s office was notified. Gurney asked if he could accompany the BCI people to the scene. Rodriguez predictably refused. But he did give Wigg the assignment of coordinating and expediting lab work on the boots. Kline said something about agreeing on a damage-control strategy for a scheduled press conference, and he and the captain went off to confer privately, leaving Gurney and Holdenfield alone in the conference room.
“So?” she said. It was half a question, half an amused observation.
“So?” he repeated.
She shrugged, glanced at her briefcase, in which she had replaced her copies of the Karnala ads.
He guessed she wanted to know more about his earlier disturbed reaction. He’d already told her it was hard to explain. And he still wasn’t ready to talk about it, still hadn’t figured out the implications of full disclosure, still hadn’t figured out the damage-control options.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“I’d love to hear it.”
“I’d love to tell you about it, but… it’s complicated.” The first part was less true than the second part. “Maybe another time.”
“Okay.” She smiled back. “Another time.”
With no chance of direct access to the lab techs and no other compelling reason to hang around the state police campus, Gurney headed home to Walnut Crossing, with the day’s wild bits and pieces swirling through his head.
Ballston’s surreal confession, the genteel voice emanating from a hellish mind, describing his compliance with Karnala’s beheading request as a courtesy, the beheading of Savannah Liston echoing the beheaded doll on the bed echoing the beheaded bride at the table. And the rubber boots. Once again, the boots. Did he really think the lab tests would produce a revelation? He was too worn out from the day to know what he really thought.
The call he got from Sheridan Kline as he was finishing a bowl of leftover spaghetti added facts without adding progress. In addition to repeating everything Rodriguez had passed along from Luntz, Kline revealed that a bloodstained machete had been discovered by the K-9 team in a wooded area behind the bungalow and that the ME estimated the time of death to be roughly within a three-hour window of the cryptic predawn call Luntz had received.
There were many times in his career when Gurney had felt challenged. There were occasionally cases, such as the recent Mellery horror, in which he believed that the challenger might win. But never had he felt so broadly outmaneuvered. Sure, he had a general theory for what might be going on and who might be behind it-the whole Skard operation, with “Hector Flores” recruiting “bad girls” for the murderous pleasure of the sickest men on earth-but it was just a theory. And even if it were valid, it still didn’t come close to explaining the twisty mechanics of the murders themselves. It didn’t explain the impossible placement of the machete behind Ashton’s cottage. It didn’t explain the function of the boots. It didn’t explain the choice of the local victims.
Why, exactly, did Jillian Perry, Kiki Muller, and Savannah Liston all have to die?
Worst of all, without knowing why those three were killed, how would it be possible to protect whoever else might be in danger?
After exhausting himself by exploring the same blind alleys over and over, Gurney fell asleep around midnight.
When he awoke seven hours later, a gusty wind was heaving waves of gray rain against the bedroom windows. The window next to his bed-the only one in the house he’d left unlocked-was open two inches at the top, not enough to let the rain blow in but more than enough to admit a damp draft that made his sheets and pillow feel clammy.