Peter Pan Must Die (22 page)

Gurney spoke calmly. “I have the Emmerling Oaks security video of the individual who probably killed Mary Spalter. The individual on that video is definitely not Kay Spalter. And someone else who saw the video insists the same person was in the Axton Avenue building at the time the shot was fired at Carl.”

“So fucking what? Even if it was a pro, even if it was a double contract, that doesn’t get the bitch off the hook. All it means is she bought the hit instead of doing it herself. So it wasn’t her own sweaty little finger on the trigger. So she hired the triggerman—just like she tried to do before with Jimmy Flats.” Klemper suddenly looked excited. “You know what? I
love
your new theory, Gurney. It ties in with the bitch’s attempt to hire Flats to hit her husband, plus her attempt to talk her boyfriend into doing it. Ties the knot tighter around her fucking neck.” He stared at Gurney with a triumphant grin. “What do you got to say now?”

“It matters who pulled the trigger. It matters whether the eyewitness IDs are right or wrong. It matters whether the trial testimony is honest or perjured. It matters whether the video you buried supports or destroys the shooting scenario.”

“That’s the kind of shit that matters to you?” Klemper sucked a wad of mucus out of his nose and spat it out on the ground. “I expected more from you.”

“More of what?”

“I came here today because I found out you worked homicide for twenty-five years in the NYPD. Twenty-five years in Sewer City. I figured anyone who spent twenty-five years dealing with every piece of shit that crawled out of a hole would understand reality.”

“What reality would that be?”

“The reality that when push comes to shove,
right
matters more than rules. The reality that we’re in a war, not a fucking chess match. White hats versus scumbags. When the enemy is coming at you, you stop the fucker however you can. You don’t stop a bullet by waving a fucking rule book at it.”

“Suppose you have it wrong.”

“Suppose I have
what
wrong?”

“Suppose Carl Spalter’s death had nothing to do with his wife. Suppose his brother had him shot to get control of Spalter Realty. Or the mob had him shot because they decided they didn’t want him to be governor after all. Or his daughter had him shot because she wanted to inherit his money. Or his wife’s lover had him shot because—”

Klemper broke in, red-faced. “That’s all total horseshit. Kay Spalter
is an evil, conniving, murdering whore. And if there’s any justice in this fucking world, she’ll die in prison with her brains bashed out on the floor. End of story!” Tiny bits of the spittle around his mouth were flying into the air.

Gurney nodded thoughtfully. “You may be right.” It was his favorite all-purpose response—to the friendly and the furious, the sane and the insane. He went on calmly, “Tell me something. Did you ever run the shooter’s MO through the ViCAP database?”

Klemper stared at him, blinking repeatedly, as though it would help him understand the question better. “What the hell do you want to know that for?”

Gurney shrugged. “Just wondering. There are some distinctive elements in the shooter’s approach. Be interesting to see if they’ve popped up anywhere else.”

“You’re out of your mind.” Klemper started backing away.

“You may be right. But if you decide to check out that MO, there’s one more situation you should look into. You ever hear of an upstate Greek gangster by the name of Fat Gus Gurikos?”

“Gurikos?” Now Klemper looked honestly confused. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“Carl asked Gus to take care of something for him. And then Gus just coincidentally got hit the same day Carl did—two days after Carl’s mother. So maybe we’re really talking about a triple hit.”

Klemper frowned, said nothing.

“I’d look into it if I were you. I’ve been told the Organized Crime Task Force kept the Gurikos thing pretty much to themselves, but if there’s a tie-in to the Spalter case you have a right to know the details.”

Shaking his head, Klemper looked like he’d rather be anywhere other than where he was. He turned away abruptly and was getting into his huge SUV when he noticed that Gurney’s Outback was blocking him.

“You want to get that thing out of my way?” It was a snarled order, not a question.

Gurney moved his car, and Klemper drove off without looking at him, nearly hitting the mailbox as he turned down the mountain road.

It was then that Gurney noticed Madeleine at the corner of the barn with the rooster and the three hens standing quietly in the grass behind her. The birds were strangely motionless, their heads cocked, as if aware of the approach of something they could not yet identify.

After a less-than-relaxed dinner during which neither she nor Gurney said much, Madeleine began doing the dishes—a task she always insisted was hers.

Gurney went over and sat quietly on a stool at the sink island. He knew if he waited long enough, she’d get around to saying what was on her mind.

When the washed dishes had all been placed in the drainer, she picked up a towel to dry them. “I assume that was the Spalter murder investigator?”

“Yes. Mick Klemper.”

“A
very
angry man.”

Whenever Madeleine stated the obvious, he knew that something less obvious was being implied. In this instance it wasn’t clear to him what that something was, but he did feel the need to offer some sort of explanation for what she’d apparently overheard.

“It must have been a difficult day for him.”

“Difficult?”

He elaborated. “Once the Bincher accusations started shooting around the Internet, a lot of people would have been calling Klemper for clarification. BCI brass, State Police Legal Department, DA’s office, Internal Affairs, attorney general’s office—not to mention the media vultures.”

She was holding a plate in her hand, frowning. “I find it hard to understand.”

“It’s simple enough. After talking to Kay Spalter, Klemper decided she was guilty. The question is, how sick was that decision?”

“How
sick
?”

“I mean, how much of it was based on Kay reminding him of his ex-wife? Also, how many laws did he break to make sure she got convicted?”

She was still holding the plate. “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the level of rage I saw down at the barn, how close to the edge he was, how—”

“I’m pretty sure that was all coming out of fear. Fear that the evil Kay will go free, fear that his view of the case is about to be smashed, fear of losing his job, fear of going to jail. The fear of disintegrating, falling apart, losing his grasp of who he is. The fear of becoming nobody.”

“So you’re saying he’s desperate.”

“Absolutely desperate.”

“Desperate. Disintegrating.”

“Yes.”

“Were you carrying your gun?”

For a moment the question baffled him. “No. Of course not.”

“You were face-to-face with a furious lunatic—a
desperate, disintegrating
individual. But
of course
you weren’t carrying your gun?” She had a look of pain in her eyes. Pain and fear. “Now do you understand why I want you to see Malcolm Claret?”

He was about to say something about not knowing that Klemper would be waiting for him, that he’d never liked carrying a gun, and that he generally didn’t do so unless he was facing some known threat—but he realized that she was talking about something deeper and broader than this one incident, and for that larger subject at that moment he had no appetite.

After drying the same plate absently for another minute, she left the room and headed up the hall stairs. A minute later, he heard the initial bars of an unpleasantly jagged cello piece.

He’d avoided discussing the issue implicit in her question about Malcolm Claret, but now he couldn’t help picturing the man himself—the cerebral gaze, the thinning hair over a high, pale forehead, the gestures as economical as his speech, the colorless slacks and loose cardigan, the stillness, the unassuming manner.

Gurney realized he was picturing the man as he appeared many
years ago. He altered the image in his mind as a computer aging program might—deepening wrinkles, subtracting hair, adding the wearying effects of time and gravity on facial flesh. Uncomfortable with the result, he put it out of his mind.

He thought instead about Klemper—about his obsessive negative focus on Kay Spalter, his certainty regarding her guilt, his willingness to subvert the investigation to produce the desired conclusion as quickly as possible.

The approach was disconcerting—not because it was completely divorced from normal procedure, but because it
wasn’t
. Klemper’s offense seemed to Gurney not a matter of kind but of degree. The notion that a good detective always proceeds via pure logic and an open mind to objective conclusions concerning the nature of the crime and the identity of the perpetrator is at best a pleasant fantasy. In the real world of crime and punishment—as in all human endeavors—objectivity is an illusion. Survival itself demands that we leap to conclusions. Crucial action is always based on partial evidence. The hunter who demands a zoologist’s affidavit that the deer in his sights is truly a deer will soon starve. The jungle dweller who counts all the tiger’s stripes before deciding to retreat will be killed and eaten. The genes that urge certainty tend not to be passed into the next generation.

In the real world, we must connect the few dots we have and guess at a pattern that makes workable sense. It’s an imperfect system. So is life itself. The danger arises not so much from the scarcity of dots as from the unconscious personal agenda that prioritizes certain dots over others, an agenda that
wants
the pattern to look a certain way. Our perceptions of events are warped more by the power of our emotions than by the weakness of our data.

In this light, the situation was simple. Klemper
wanted
Kay to be guilty and therefore came to believe that she was. Dots that didn’t fit the pattern were devalued or ignored. Rules that impeded a “righteous” ending were similarly devalued or ignored.

But there was another way of looking at it.

Since the process of moving to a conclusion on the basis of incomplete data was natural and necessary, the common warning against doing so really amounted to no more than a warning not to leap to the
wrong
conclusion. The truth was that any conclusion might be
premature. The final verdict on the validity of the leap would be rendered by the validity of the result.

That thought raised a disquieting possibility.

Suppose Klemper’s conclusion was correct
.

Suppose the hate-filled Klemper had arrived at the truth. Suppose his sloppy procedures and possible felonies constituted a rotten route to the right end. Suppose Kay Spalter was, in fact, guilty of murdering her husband. Gurney had no great appetite for helping to free a stone-cold killer, no matter how deeply flawed her trial may have been.

And there was yet another possibility. Suppose Klemper’s hell-bent determination to have Kay put away had nothing to do with limited perceptions or faulty conclusions. Suppose it was a cynical and corrupt effort, bought and paid for by a third party who wanted the case closed as quickly as possible.

Suppose, suppose, suppose
. Gurney was finding the echo irritating and unproductive—and the need for more facts compelling.

The dissonant chords of Madeleine’s cello piece were growing louder.

After listening to Gurney on the phone recounting the content of his meeting with Adonis Angelidis, including the grotesque aspects of the Gus Gurikos murder, Jack Hardwick was uncharacteristically silent. Then, instead of criticizing him once again for departing from the narrow issues that would drive the appeal process, he asked Gurney to come to his house for a more thorough discussion of the case status.

“Now?” Gurney glanced at the clock. It was nearly seven-thirty, and the sun had already slipped down behind the western ridge.

“Now would be good. This thing is getting way too weird.”

As big a surprise as the invitation was, it wasn’t one Gurney was going to argue with. A thorough, all-issues-on-the-table discussion was definitely needed.

Another surprise greeted him when he arrived thirty-five minutes later at Hardwick’s rented farmhouse—at the lonely end of a dirt road, high in the darkening hills outside the tiny village of Dillweed. In his headlights he could see a second car parked next to the red GTO—a bright blue Mini Cooper. Evidently the man had a visitor.

Gurney was aware that Hardwick had been involved in quite a few relationships in the past, but he hadn’t imagined any of those women looking quite as dramatic as the one who opened the door.

If it wasn’t for her intelligent, aggressive eyes that seemed to be assessing him from the first instant, Gurney would have been easily distracted by the rest of her—a figure somewhere between athletic and voluptuous, boldly displayed in cutoff jeans and a loose scoop-neck T-shirt. She was barefoot with red toenails, caramel-tan skin,
and ebony hair cut short in a way that emphasized her full lips and prominent cheekbones. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she had a definite
presence
—not unlike Hardwick himself.

A moment later the man appeared beside her with a proprietary grin.

“Come in. Thanks for making the trip.”

Gurney stepped through the doorway into the front room. What he remembered from previous visits as a Spartan box of a room had acquired some warmer touches: a colorful carpet, a framed print of orange poppies bending in a breeze, a vase of pussy willow branches, a lush plant in a massive earthenware pot, two new armchairs, a nice pine sideboard, and a round breakfast table with three ladder-back chairs in the corner of the room nearest the kitchen. This woman had evidently inspired some changes.

Gurney surveyed the scene approvingly. “Very nice, Jack. Definite improvement.”

Hardwick nodded. “Yeah, I agree.” Then he laid his hand on the woman’s half-bare shoulder and said, “Dave, I’d like you to meet BCI investigator Esti Moreno.”