Another casualty of the evening’s stress and confusion. He’d have to apologize, explain. He was about to listen to the message from Hardwick when he was stopped by an odd sound in the bathroom ceiling directly above him.
A faint creaking.
He looked up and saw, or thought he saw, a few tiny specks of plaster dust descend from the edge of the light fixture over the tub. He focused on the spot, waiting for it to happen again. After a few moments, he stepped up onto the rim of the bathtub to get a closer look, balancing himself with one hand against the tile wall.
From there he could see that the decorative medallion around the fixture was imprecisely aligned over the wiring hole in the ceiling, leaving a gap of a millimeter or two along one edge. From the floor the gap appeared to be nothing more than a shadow line.
His first thought was that the opening might provide access for audio or video surveillance. The scanner, however, should have picked up any electronic activity of that nature, and it hadn’t. And it certainly wasn’t the only poorly centered light-fixture medallion he’d ever seen. He would have dismissed it as a matter of no concern—if it wasn’t for that muted creaking sound he’d heard, and that almost-invisible wisp of falling dust.
He went back to the bedroom alcove and put on his shoes. Then he strapped on his ankle holster and inserted the Beretta into it. Listening to Madeleine’s breathing, he was relieved that it sounded more regular. But the tic was still active in her cheek. As he was wondering if there was something more he could be doing for her, his phone rang.
It was Hardwick again.
He decided to take the call, but the bathroom no longer seemed a secure place to talk. He got the suite key, went out into the corridor, and locked the door behind him.
He kept his voice low. “What’s up?”
“Got some answers back from Palm Beach PD. You asked if there was any evidence that Christopher Wenzel had a bright view of his future. According to Bobby Becker, just before Wenzel headed up to Wolf Lake he put a down payment on a new Audi.”
“How does Becker square that with Wenzel’s suicide a week later?”
“Becker wasn’t the detective who caught the Wenzel case, so this is all kind of secondhand. But it seems that the detective that was on it was taken off it almost immediately. So squaring the purchase with the suicide wasn’t a problem anyone down there wrestled with.”
“Any explanation for his removal from the case?”
“He was told national security issues were involved. End of story.”
“So we have a pattern.”
“Of optimistic guys ending up dead?”
“And local investigations being preempted. Anything else from Becker?”
“One big item. You asked if anyone besides Pardosa got an odd phone call before they made their Wolf Lake arrangements. Well, according to Becker, there’s a phone record of Wenzel receiving a call from a prepaid cell phone a week before he went up to Wolf Lake. And a record of him calling the lodge reservations number that same day.”
“How do we know there’s a causal link between the two calls?”
“Let me finish. He got two calls from that prepaid cell number. One on the day he made his reservation, and the second on the day he cut his wrists. The origination point of both calls was the Wolf Lake cell tower. I’d be willing to bet that Balzac and Pardosa got the same pair of calls from that same untraceable phone.”
Gurney was quiet for a long moment. “I’m not sure what this particular convergence means. It seems to mean that someone at the lodge—or at least within range of the lodge cell tower—may have persuaded three of the four victims to come and meet with Hammond.”
“Right. And called again on the day each of them died.”
“That would be the call Fenton claims was a post-hypnotic triggering device—whatever the hell that means.” As he was speaking, Gurney was pacing along the corridor outside the suite. The light fixtures on the wall had been turned down, and in the gloom the crimson of the carpet was as dull as dried blood. “This phone call angle could be hugely important, Jack, but I need to let it sink in. Meantime, let me tell you what I found out from Scott Fallon’s mother.”
“She actually spoke to you?”
“Yes. Definitely on the flakey side, but she gave me some facts and confirmed some assumptions. Her son was gay, constantly bullied, and terrified. But here’s the big news. There was a boy her son was especially afraid of. His name was Balzac.”
“Goddamn!”
“So now we know that at least two of our current victims were at Brightwater at the same time. Steven Pardosa and Leo Balzac.”
“If two of them were there, then I bet all four were. That could be the connection we’ve been looking for. And that antigay shit sure does keep popping up.”
“Yes,” said Gurney. “And it keeps getting uglier.”
“Are we thinking our four dead guys might have been behind Scott Fallon’s disappearance?”
“It’s a workable hypothesis.”
“In the interest of calling a spade a spade, can we agree that disappearance in this case means death—even though the kid’s body was never found?”
The question jarred Gurney back into the world of Madeleine’s bathroom breakdown—her traumatic vision of another body that was never found.
Hardwick cleared his throat. “You still there?”
“I’m here.”
“When we say Scott Fallon disappeared, we’re saying he was killed, right?”
“That’s the most likely scenario.”
“You all right, ace? You sound a little off.”
As Gurney was weighing the pros and cons of discussing Madeleine’s experience, his train of thought was derailed by a sound from the attic.
A barely perceptible creaking.
“Sorry, Jack, got to cut this short. I’ll get back to you soon as I can.”
He ended the call and began searching for a back staircase or other access to the upper floor. Heading along the corridor, he passed eight widely spaced doors that presumably led to guest rooms, four on each side. At the bottom of the last door on the right, a thin line of light was visible, and he heard music playing—something baroque.
With no other guests in residence, he figured it had to be Norris Landon’s room.
When he reached what he expected to be the end of the corridor, it made a right-angle turn into an unlit cul-de-sac. This claustrophobic extension terminated in a metal door of the sort one might find on a janitor’s closet.
Surprised to find the door unlocked, he opened it to discover the bottom steps of a narrow staircase that lead up to the attic.
He noted odors of dust and mold and something faintly rotten. He located a light switch and flipped it up. A low-wattage bulb came on in a bare porcelain fixture at the top of the stairs.
When he reached the top landing he found that it led to another door.
The door was slightly ajar.
He called out in a loud voice, “Is anyone there?”
Surely it was his imagination, but the silence behind the door seemed to deepen.
He called out again in the authoritarian police cadence that was etched into the circuits of his brain. “If anyone is there, speak up and identify yourself.”
There was no response.
He nudged the door open with his foot.
The musty smell grew stronger. The weak bulb in the landing illuminated very little of the attic room in front of him. He groped along the inside wall until he found a switch. The light fixture that came on was attached to a ridge beam high in the peaked ceiling of what appeared to be a vast storage room. A number of large angular objects, perhaps unused pieces of furniture, were draped with sheets. A corroded drip bucket was positioned under a rafter that was glistening with moisture. The air in the room was cold and damp.