He’d laid bare a portion of the rough-sawn joist structure that separated the floorboards of the attic from the plaster ceiling of the area below it. Most significantly, he’d laid bare the wiring and support hardware of a light fixture in the ceiling of the room below. He could see that the round medallion designed to cover the opening in the plaster for the fixture wiring didn’t quite cover all of it. There was a narrow gap, just a few millimeters wide. A thin line of light from the bathroom below was shining up through it.
He examined the area around the top of the fixture as well as the joist to which it was fastened. He concluded there were no surveillance devices present. There were, however, clear signs that two devices of some sort had been installed and later removed, probably in a hurry.
It appeared that one may have been a fiber-optic video camera with its associated transmitter. There were several short pieces of fresh, sticky duct tape hanging from the side of the joist closest to the opening in the ceiling. There was a small spring clamp taped just above the opening. Gurney guessed it would have held the lens end of the optic cable in place. He figured the pieces of tape would have secured the rest of the cable to the joist to keep it from moving or creating any torquing pressure at the clamp. Cable-like imprints on the tape supported this idea. Two larger pieces of tape at what would have been the far end of the cable had probably supported the camera and transmitter components.
That raised a question. Why hadn’t the transmitter come to light when he conducted the surveillance scan of the suite the previous day? Had it been removed by then? Or not yet installed at the time of the scan? If the latter, why was it removed so quickly?
The evidence for the recent presence of a second device was convincing but unenlightening. A small pair of clamps were affixed to the joist above the opening in the plaster, but there was no way of knowing what sort of device they’d held in place.
He checked the widths at which the clamps were set to guesstimate the size of the device they’d held. He concluded it was something roughly the diameter of a lipstick, of unknown length.
Satisfied that he’d discovered as much as there was to be discovered, he eased the floorboards back into place. He stood up and took another look around the cavernous room. In the sweeping beam of his flashlight, the shadows of the wolves lunged wildly across the wall.
He turned his flashlight up toward the Gall crest on the wall.
Virtus. Perseverantia. Dominatus.
He was struck by the coincidence of those stern sentiments being set above the ferocious beasts on the floor. His attention was drawn especially to the culminating term in the series: Dominatus.
He recalled that it could be translated in many ways. But common to all those translations was one central concept: Control.
As he thought about it in the context of the case, he began to see it as a recurring theme—from Elliman Gall’s obsession with wolf killing, to Ethan Gall’s focus on reforming the world by rehabilitating criminal personalities, to Peyton Gall’s unbridled self-will.
And it went beyond the Gall family. According to Gilbert Fenton, the essence of the case involved Richard Hammond’s total control over his four victims.
Fenton’s own media strategy, of course, was all about controlling the public perception of the case, controlling its future prosecutorial direction, controlling the fate of Richard Hammond.
The shadowy forces above Fenton were controlling investigatory decisions in four separate jurisdictions.
Going back thirteen years to that infamous summer at Camp Brightwater, Gurney wondered about the anonymous four—Lion, Spider, Wolf, Weasel. Moe Blumberg said their fellow campers were afraid of them. What kind of control had they exercised over those kids? What kind of control had they exercised over Scott Fallon?
That train of thought brought Gurney around to the four recent murders. He was convinced that ‘murder’ was the only realistic term for what had happened to the four men who bled to death from their severed wrist arteries. Whatever obscure steps had been taken to bring about their deaths, the process must have been orchestrated with their deaths as the goal. In his book, that was the definition of murder.
And murder was the ultimate act of control.
CHAPTER 42
“So what the hell are you saying?” asked Hardwick. “That it was a power struggle? And the dead guys lost? Who the fuck won?”
Gurney was sitting in the Hearth Room. Rather than going directly back to the suite from the attic, he’d stopped there to call Hardwick and bring him up to date on his discoveries and his suspicion that the element of control might be central to the case.
It was that last notion that Hardwick had challenged. He loved the concrete, hated the conceptual, and reacted predictably. “Whatever it’s about, Sherlock, I have total faith that you’ll figure it out and reveal it to us lesser mortals in your own time. Meanwhile, you want to hear my own Camp Brightwater brainstorm?”
“Nothing I’d like better.”
“Okay, then. Leo the Lion.”
Gurney thought about it for a moment. “You’re saying that Leo Balzac was one of the anonymous four? Because Leo means Lion?”
“It’s a direct connection, right? And I’m thinking that Wolf was probably Ethan Gall.”
“Because of the family estate at Wolf Lake?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Except we have no evidence Ethan was at Brightwater. You have any other linkups?”
“How about Wenzel the Weasel?”
“That’s conceivable. There’s one more victim and one more nickname. Pardosa and Spider. You see some way they connect?”
“Not yet. But three out of four has to mean something.”
“It might mean we’re getting desperate for connections. But let’s say for argument’s sake that our four victims were the four bad seeds at Brightwater. And that they were responsible for Scott Fallon’s death. Is that where you’re going with this?”
“Why not? It makes sense.” Hardwick sounded excited.
“All right,” said Gurney calmly. “But even if that’s true, it happened thirteen years ago. What’s the connection to the present events?”
“Maybe someone else knew what happened. Or found out about it later. Suppose Richard Hammond found out what happened at Brightwater that summer. Suppose he found out that a gay teenage boy had been beaten to death by Gall, Balzac, Wenzel, and Pardosa.” He paused. “Suppose he decided to do something about it.”
“Other than pass along what he knew to law enforcement?”
“Seeing how useless law enforcement was the first time around, suppose he decided to avenge Fallon’s death himself. Hammond devoted his early career to gay men and boys. How might he react if he discovered the identities of four people who killed a boy just because he was gay? Maybe Hammond took the position at Wolf Lake for easy access to Ethan. Maybe he was the one who made those phone calls that enticed the other three into coming to the lodge. Maybe he even concocted some kind of financial carrot to draw them into the trap.”
That struck a chord. It fit with the stories of Wenzel, Balzac, and Pardosa seeming to have improved financial prospects around the time of their meetings with Hammond. But Gurney wasn’t convinced.
Hardwick seemed to sense his skepticism. “Look, I’m not trying to sell you this scenario. Truth be told, I hope I’m wrong.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if I’m right, Fenton is right. And that’s a revolting thought.”
“But you aren’t pushing the scenario as far as Fenton is. I mean, you aren’t buying into the notion of people being hypnotized into committing suicide, right?”