“You’re an accountant?”
“I got no credentials, no titles, just a thing about numbers. I’m like one of them idiot savants, without the idiot part.”
“You appear to be a lot more than the lodge’s bookkeeper.”
“Yeah, well. Time passed. Things changed. Ethan saw that my head for numbers could be used in a lot of ways. So I progressed to general manager of Wolf Lake Lodge and financial advisor to the Gall family. Pretty amazing ride for a small-time thief, right?”
“I’m impressed.”
“Right. So how the hell can I criticize Ethan’s determination and faith in people? Yeah, sometimes it means that a Looney Tune like Barlow Tarr lasts here way beyond the point when he shoulda got the boot, but it also means that this particular small-time thief you’re looking at right here in this chair got lifted out of the gutter and got trusted to manage not only a thousand-dollar-a-night enterprise but the whole fucking Gall fortune. Which is like a fairy tale.”
“With Ethan gone, what’s keeping you from getting rid of Tarr?”
“I ask myself the same thing. Maybe it’s superstition.”
“Superstition?”
“You know, like I’m only here because of Ethan’s decision to put me here and keep me here. And that’s why Tarr’s here, too. Maybe I’m afraid that if I get rid of him, somebody’ll get rid of me. Some karma shit. But that don’t really make practical sense. And I’m a practical guy. So I’m thinking one of these days pretty soon Mr. Loon is out on his crazy ass.”
“Speaking of which, I gather you’ve decided to honor Richard Hammond’s contract for another year.”
“What’s fair is fair, right?”
“You’re keeping an open mind about him?”
“Presumed innocent, right?”
“Even with all that negative media coverage?”
“That’s nasty shit, but sometimes we got to live with that kind of shit, right?”
“So, despite all the bad publicity, you decided to stand by Hammond because of a legal presumption of innocence and a sense of fairness?”
Steckle shrugged. “Also out of respect for Ethan. Before all this shit went down, he agreed to renew Hammond’s contract. I want to abide by that decision. Maybe that’s just my superstition again, but that’s the way it is. Who am I gonna respect if I don’t respect Ethan?”
“So you have a presumption of innocence and an oral promise on the one hand. On the other hand, there’s the possibility that Hammond might be implicated in the death of Gall himself, as well as three lodge guests. Puts you pretty far out on a limb if Hammond is convicted.”
Steckle’s eyes narrowed again. “Convicted of what?”
“Some form of felony involvement in all four deaths.”
“You avoid the word ‘suicide.’ There a reason for that?”
Gurney smiled. “It doesn’t make sense to me. How about you?”
Steckle didn’t answer. He leaned back in his chair and began rubbing his scalp as though his thoughts were giving him a headache.
Gurney continued. “So I’m thinking, considering the big downside possibilities and you being a practical guy, maybe there’s another reason you decided to keep Hammond around?”
Steckle stared at him, his mouth slowly stretching into a hard smile. “You want a practical reason? Okay. Simple. If we got rid of Hammond now . . . yeah, that could look like we were dumping garbage overboard, sending a message to the media that we’re on the side of the angels. But you gotta consider all the outcomes. And one of them outcomes would be the kind of message it would send to all those people who came here over the past two years to be treated by that man. We dump him now, the message to those guests is that all the shit in the media is true and we put them at the mercy of a monster. Believe me, that’s no kinda message to give your paying guests, some of whom are very wealthy people. But if we keep Hammond here, the message is that we have confidence in him and the media stories are horseshit. That practical enough for you?”
“It does help me understand your decision.”
Steckle appeared to relax, sinking more comfortably into his chair. “I guess I sound a little cynical. But what can I say? I got to protect the Gall interests here. That’s what Ethan trusted me to do. And I owe everything to that man.”
GURNEY HAD MORE QUESTIONS FOR AUSTEN STECKLE—QUESTIONS about Ethan and Peyton, about the Gall New Life Foundation, about the three guests who ended up dead.
If he pursued any of that now, though, he’d miss his chance to meet with Rebecca—whose knowledge of Hammond, hypnosis, and dreams could be very helpful.
His solution was to secure Austen’s agreement to meet with him again when he returned from Plattsburgh later that morning.
He thanked the man for his time and candor and hurried out to his car.
The air was bracing, the visibility extraordinary. A glass-smooth sheet of ice had formed overnight on the surface of the lake, reflecting an inverted image of Cemetery Ridge.
As Gurney was pulling out from under the timbered portico onto the lake road, his phone was ringing. Seeing that it was Jack Hardwick, he took the call.
“Hey, Sherlock, how’s life in the grand lodge so far?”
“It’s . . . unusual.”
“You sound like you’re in your car. Where the hell are you?”
“On my way to Plattsburgh to meet with Holdenfield. She seems to have an interest in the case.”
Hardwick uttered his bark of a laugh. “Becky Baby’s interest is mainly in you, ace. Where does she want to meet you?”
“I told you—Plattsburgh.”
“That’s the name of the city. But what I’m asking is—”
Gurney cut him off. “Jack, in a little while I’ll be driving out of the range of the lodge’s cell tower. Could we cut the crap and get to whatever you called about?”
“Okay, I might have a line on Angela Castro, missing girlfriend of the Floral Park corpse. She has a married brother who lives in Staten Island. I called his number. Young, nervous female voice answered the phone. I told her I was taking a survey for the utility company about appliance usage. She said she couldn’t tell me anything because it wasn’t her house, I should call back later. I figure I’ll pay her a visit. Something tells me this is our Angela. Assuming I’m right, is there anything special you want to know?”
“Beyond the obvious questions about Steven Pardosa’s death—what did she see, what did she hear, what does she think, why did she disappear—I’d like to know what he was like before and after his trip to Wolf Lake, his moods, his comments, his nightmares. Why did he go so far away to deal with his smoking habit. How did he know about Richard Hammond?”
“That it?”
“Ask her how Pardosa felt about homosexuals.”
“Why?”
“Just a shot in the dark. It was an area of Hammond’s practice years ago. There was some controversy about his approach at the time. And this minister, Bowman Cox, is obsessed with the subject, claiming Hammond’s focus on it was the cause of Christopher Wenzel’s suicide. Speaking of which, I’d like to know whether Wenzel himself had any strong feelings on the subject. Maybe that’s what drew him to Cox, what made Cox the man he wanted to discuss his nightmare with. I know this is pretty vague, but we’ve got to start somewhere.”