He just wanted her to be all right.
To be herself again.
That train of thought was cut short by the ringing of his phone—and the presence on the screen of an unexpected ID. It was Moe Blumberg, former owner of Camp Brightwater.
“Mr. Gurney?”
“I thought by now you’d be en route to Tel Aviv.”
“We’re sitting on the plane, still at the gate at JFK. A fucking Hamas madman blew himself up at Ben Gurion airport. So here we sit. Nobody knows nothing.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Me too, along with the three hundred other sardines on this plane. But that’s the world we live in now. Get used to it, right?”
“I guess so. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing. Just a thought I had. Your question. Wondering if I recognized any names?”
That got Gurney’s attention and triggered his sense of caution. He wanted to get safely out of range of the room’s surveillance devices.
“Just a second. My wife’s asleep. Let me step into the bathroom so I don’t wake her.”
Gurney shut the bathroom door behind him. “Okay. You were saying?”
“Sometimes a little corner of my brain lights up when I leave it alone for a while. Things pop up when I stop trying to make them pop up.”
“You recall something about the names I mentioned?”
“No, those names don’t mean a thing to me. But I’ll tell you what I did remember. That summer, there was a secret club. There were four boys. Lion, Spider, Wolf, Weasel.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Lion, Spider, Wolf, Weasel. Those were their nicknames. They sprayed those four damn words—in red-paint graffiti—on cabins, tents, trees. Even on my goddamn canoe.”
“Did you ever find out who they were?”
“No. Sneaky little bastards. Maybe some of the other boys knew who they were, but I think they were scared of them. Nobody would say nothing.”
“You think there was some connection between those four boys with the nicknames and the boy who disappeared?”
“Who knows? Your visit just got wheels turning in my head, and that’s what popped up—those animal names. So I was thinking I should call you.”
“Did the police investigating Scott Fallon’s disappearance pursue this ‘secret club’ angle?”
“Not to my knowledge. Like I said before, to them the Fallon incident was just another runaway situation. And boys are always forming secret clubs. So maybe they were right, and this is a waste of your time.”
“Not at all, Mr. Blumberg. This could help a lot. While I have you on the phone, let me ask you something else. Do you recall anything about Scott Fallon’s parents—their first names, where they lived?”
“Hah! How could I ever forget? The mother—there was no father, just the mother—she kept coming up to the camp every weekend. Searching. Walking through the woods. Calling his name, even weeks later.”
“Do you remember the mother’s name?”
“Kimberly. Kimberly Fallon.”
“Do you by any chance have an address for her?”
“Sure. Address, email, phone number, everything. After she stopped coming to Brightwater, she’d call me once a week, then once a month, now maybe once a year. But what can I do? I talk to her.”
Because of the woman’s persistent communication with Blumberg, he had her contact information on his phone. Gurney entered it all on his own phone, thanked Blumberg, and wished him a safe trip. He also made a note of the four nicknames.
Lion. Spider. Wolf. Weasel.
He wondered if the nature of each animal described some characteristic of the boy who chose it. And he couldn’t help thinking that the number of boys in the secret club might be significant.
Four.
Four troublemaking boys who were at the camp when Scott Fallon disappeared.
Now, in this strange case, there were four dead men. And at least one of the four, Steven Pardosa, had been at Brightwater that summer.
Gurney still had his phone in his hand when it rang again.
This time it was Jack Hardwick.
“Good news. My buddy in Teaneck is even more ticked off than I thought.”
“About the order to back away from the Balzac case?”
“About the order coming from so high up he’s not allowed to know where it came from. That really frosted his balls.”
“And this is doing us some good?”
“I’d say so. After I saw him this morning he paid another visit to the therapist Balzac shared his weird-ass dream with. He asked her about the gay angle.”
“And?”
“First she just repeated that the dream was full of homoerotic imagery, which we already knew. But then she added that it was especially upsetting to Balzac because of his strong anti-homosexual feelings.”
Gurney smiled. It was nice to see a corner of the puzzle begin to take shape.
“There’s more,” added Hardwick.
“From the therapist?”
“From my buddy—who’s eager to help in every way he’s not supposed to. He told me that Balzac resigned from his job a few hours before he cut his wrists. Sent the owner of the tobacco shop an email. ‘Effective immediately, I am resigning from my management position at Smokers Happiness. Respectfully, Leo Balzac.’ Short and sweet, eh?”
“That seems an odd gesture.”
“So my detective friend thought.”
“Did he pursue it?”
“He was told that the details of the case were no longer his concern.”
“Because wiser minds up the ladder were taking over?”
“Words to that effect.”
“People on the verge of cutting their wrists don’t usually spend time writing resignation notes.”
“No, they don’t.”
“People usually resign for one of two reasons. They can’t stand what they’re doing. Or they’ve been offered something more attractive.”
“So where does that take us?”
“Maybe nowhere.” Gurney paused a moment to think about it. “I guess, if he wanted to stop smoking, he could have resigned to get away from tobacco. On the other hand, didn’t Steven Pardosa’s parents tell you that Steven was on the brink of turning his life around, that great things were just around the corner, something like that?”
“They did, but I wrote that off as bullshit. Like, if only he’d lived, our wonderful son could’ve cured cancer. Crap like that.”
“But suppose Pardosa actually was looking forward to something. And suppose Leo Balzac resigned because he was looking forward to something, too. Makes me curious whether Christopher Wenzel down in Florida had the same happy feeling about his future. Maybe you could call Bobby Becker at Palm Beach PD and ask him if there was any evidence of that.”
“What are you trying to prove? That the dead guys were all homophobic shitheads with rosy views of happy times ahead?”
“I’m trying to find puzzle pieces that fit together. And speaking of things fitting together—about ten minutes ago I got an interesting call from Moe Blumberg.”
“Anything useful?”
“He remembered four nicknames of the boys who belonged to a secret club at Brightwater the summer Scott Fallon disappeared. They called themselves Lion, Spider, Wolf, and Weasel.”
“So what does this mean to you?”
“The specific animal names don’t mean much to me, apart from the fact that they’re all predators. Of course, there’s the ‘wolf’ echo, but that could be a coincidence. If a kid wanted to pick a vicious nickname, it would be an obvious choice. What strikes me as possibly significant is the fact that there were four of them. And that the other campers were afraid of them. I got the impression from Moe that he wouldn’t be surprised if they had something to do with Scott Fallon’s disappearance. It’s a fact that Steven Pardosa was at Brightwater that summer. We need to find out if our other three ‘suicide’ victims were there at the same time. Given their ages, it’s possible.”