Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel (12 page)
Read Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel Online
Authors: John Verdon
At that point in the transcript, Hardwick had inserted a handwritten marginal notation: “Upon submission and review of the above written statement by Scott Ashton, it was supplemented by the following questions and answers.”
| J.H.: | Do I understand correctly that you knew little or nothing about this man’s background? |
| S.A.: | That’s correct. |
| J.H.: | He provided virtually no information about himself? |
| S.A.: | Correct. |
| J.H.: | Yet you came to trust him enough to let him live on your property, have access to your home, answer your phone? |
| S.A.: | I’m aware that it sounds idiotic, but I regarded his refusal to talk about his past as a form of honesty. I mean, if he’d wanted to conceal something, it would have been more persuasive to construct a fictitious past. But he didn’t do that. In an upside-down way, that impressed me. So yes, I trusted him even though he refused to discuss his past. |
Gurney read the entire statement a second time, more slowly, and then a third time. He found the narrative as extraordinary for
what was left out as for what was put in. Among the missing elements was a singular lack of fury. And a striking absence of the visceral horror that on the day prior to making this statement had sent the man reeling out of the cottage seconds after he’d entered it, screaming and collapsing.
Was the change simply the result of medication? A psychiatrist would have easy access to appropriate sedatives. Or was it something more than that? Impossible to tell from just words on paper. It would be interesting to meet the man, look into his eyes, hear his voice.
At least the portion of the statement referring to the unfurnished state of the cottage and Flores’s insistence on keeping it that way answered part of the mystery of its bareness in the evidence report—part, but not all. It didn’t explain why there were no clothes or shoes or bathroom items. It didn’t explain what had happened to the computer. Or why, if he removed all his personal items, Flores had chosen to leave behind a pair of boots.
Gurney’s gaze wandered over the piles of documents arrayed in front of him. He remembered earlier seeing two incident reports, not just the one he would have expected, covering the murder, and wondering why. He reached across the table, extracted the second from under the first.
It had been generated by the Tambury Village PD in response to a call received at 4:15
P.M
. on May 17, 2009—exactly one week after the murder. Complainant was listed as Dr. Scott Ashton of 42 Badger Lane, Tambury, New York. The report was filed by Sergeant Keith Garbelly. It was noted that a copy had been forwarded to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation at State Police Regional Headquarters, to the attention of Senior Investigator J. Hardwick. Gurney assumed that it was a copy of that copy he was now reading.
Complainant was sitting at patio table on south side of residence, facing main lawn area, with cup of tea on table. His habit in good weather. Heard single gunshot, simultaneously witnessed teacup shatter. Ran into house through back (patio) door, called Tambury PD. When I arrived on scene (with backup following) complainant appeared tense, anxious. Initial interview conducted
in living room. Complainant could not pinpoint source of gunshot, guessed “long range, from that general direction” (gestured out the rear window toward wooded hillside at least 300 yards away). Complainant had no additional understanding of the event, other than “possibly connected to the murder of my wife.” Claimed no actual knowledge of what the connection might be. Speculated that Hector Flores might want to kill him, too, but could provide no reason or motive
.
A copy of a BCI investigatory follow-up form was clipped to the initial incident report, indicating that a quick handoff of the matter had occurred, consistent with BCI’s primary responsibility for the case. The follow-up form had three short entries and one long one, all initialed “JH.”
Search of Ashton property, woods, hills: negative. Area interviews: negative
.
Reconstruction of cup shows impact point at exact top-to-bottom, left-to-right center. Lends support to the hypothesis that cup, not Ashton, may have been shooter’s target
.
Bullet fragments recovered from patio area too small for conclusive ballistics. Best guess: small to med caliber high-powered rifle, equipped with sophisticated scope, in the hands of an experienced shooter
.
Weapon estimate and cup-as-target conclusion shared with Scott Ashton to ascertain whether he knew anyone with that kind of equipment and shooting skills. Subject appeared troubled. When pressed, he named two people with similar rifle and scope: himself and Jillian’s father, Dr. Withrow Perry. Perry, he said, liked to go on exotic hunting trips and was an expert marksman. Ashton claimed to have purchased his own rifle (high-end Weatherby .257) at Perry’s suggestion. When I asked to see it, he discovered that it was missing from the wooden case in which he kept it locked in his den closet. He could not date the last time he had seen the gun but said that it might have been two or three months earlier. Asked whether Hector Flores knew of its existence and
location, he replied that Flores had accompanied him to Kingston the day he purchased it and that Flores had built the oak box in which it was stored
.
Gurney turned the form over, looked for a backup sheet, riffled through the pile from which it came, but could find no follow-up entry on the interview that must have been conducted subsequently with Withrow Perry. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it had fallen into the crack that sometimes swallowed critical issues during the transfer of a case from one CIO to another—in this case from the wild-swinging Hardwick to the clumsy Blatt. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that happening.
It was time for a second cup of coffee.
Chapter 13
I
t could have been any number of things—the fresh rush of caffeine, a natural restlessness arising from sitting in the same chair too long, the oppressive prospect of navigating his solitary way in the middle of the night through that landscape of unprioritized documents, the seemingly unpursued questions concerning the whereabouts of Withrow Perry and his rifle on the afternoon of May 17. Perhaps it was all those forces together that drove him to pick up his cell phone and call Jack Hardwick. All those forces, plus an idea that had occurred to him about the shattered teacup.
The phone was answered after five rings, just as Gurney was thinking about the message he’d leave.
“Yeah?”
“Lot of charm in that greeting, Jack.”
“If I knew it was just you, I wouldn’t have tried so hard. What’s up?”
“That’s a big file you gave me.”
“You got a question?”
“I’m looking at five hundred sheets of paper here. Just wondering if you wanted to point me in any particular direction.”
Hardwick erupted in one of his harsh laughs that sounded more like a sandblasting tool than a human emotion. “Shit, Gurney, Holmes isn’t supposed to ask Watson to point him in the right direction.”
“Let me put it another way,” said Gurney, remembering what a pain it always was to get a simple answer out of Hardwick. “Are there any documents in this mountain of crap that you think I’d find especially interesting?”
“Like pictures of naked women?”
These games with Hardwick could go on way too long. Gurney decided to change the rules, change the subject, catch him off balance.
“Jillian Perry was beheaded at 4:13
P.M.
,” he announced. “Give or take thirty seconds.”
There was a brief silence. “How the fuck …?”
Gurney pictured Hardwick’s mind caroming over the case terrain—around the cottage, the woods, the lawn—trying to pick up the clue he’d missed. After allowing what he imagined to be the man’s amazement and frustration to blossom fully, Gurney whispered, “The answer is in the tea leaves.” Then he broke the connection.
H
ardwick called back ten minutes later, faster than Gurney had expected. The surprising truth about Hardwick: Lurking at the center of that exasperating personality was a very sharp mind. How far might the man have gone, Gurney often wondered, and how much happier might he be were he not so encumbered by his own attitudes? Of course, that was a question that applied to a lot of people, himself not the least.
Gurney didn’t bother saying hello. “You agree with me, Jack?”
“It’s not a sure thing.”
“Nothing is. But you understand the logic, right?”
“Sure,” said Hardwick, managing to convey that he understood it without being impressed by it. “The time Tambury PD got the call from Ashton about the teacup was four-fifteen. And Ashton said he ran into the house as soon as he realized what had happened. Making some assumptions about the time it would take him to get from the patio table to the nearest phone inside the house, maybe looking out the window a few times to check for any sign of the shooter, dialing the actual local PD number rather than just 911, allowing for a couple of rings before it was answered—all that would put the actual gunshot back to about four-thirteen. But that’s just the gunshot. To connect it the way you’re connecting it to the exact time of the murder the week before, you gotta make three giant
leaps. One, the teacup shooter is the same guy who killed the bride. Two, he knew the precise minute he killed her. Three, he wanted to send a message by blasting the teacup at the same minute of the same hour of the same day of the week. That’s what you’re saying?”
“Close enough.”
“It’s not impossible.” Hardwick’s voice conjured the habitually skeptical expression that had etched permanent lines into his face. “But so what? What the hell difference does it make whether it’s true or not?”
“I don’t know yet. But there’s something about the echo effect …”
“One severed head and one smashed teacup, each in the middle of a table, one week apart?”
“Something like that,” said Gurney, suddenly doubtful. Hardwick’s tone had a way of making other people’s ideas sound absurd. “But getting back to the mountain of crap you dumped in my lap, is there anyplace you’d like me to start?”
“Start anywhere, ace. You won’t be disappointed. Just about every sheet of paper there has at least one weird twist. Never seen a weirder, twistier case. Or a weirder, twistier bunch of people. The message from my gut? Whatever the fuck’s going on ain’t what it seems to be.”
“One more question, Jack. How come there’s no record of a follow-up interview with Withrow Perry regarding the teacup incident?”
After a moment’s silence, Hardwick emitted a raspy bray, hardly a laugh at all. “Sharp, Davey, very sharp. Zeroed in on that super quick. There wasn’t any official interview because I was officially removed from the case the same day we discovered that the good doctor happened to own the perfect gun for putting a bullet through a teacup at three hundred yards. I’d call the failure to follow up on that fact a fucking stupid oversight on the part of the new CIO, wouldn’t you?”
“I gather you didn’t go out of your way to remind him?”
“Not allowed anywhere near the active investigation. I was warned off by no less than our revered captain.”
“And you were taken off the case because …?”
“I already told you. I spoke inappropriately to my superior. I informed him of the limitations of his approach. I may also have alluded to the limitations of his intelligence and general unsuitability for command.”
A long ten seconds passed without either man speaking.
“You sound like you hate him, Jack.”
“Hate? Nah. I don’t hate him. I don’t hate anybody. I love the whole fucking world.”
Chapter 14
H
aving cleared just enough space for his laptop between a couple of document piles on the long table, Gurney went to the Google Earth website and entered Ashton’s Tambury address. He centered the image over the cottage and the thicket behind it, enlarging it to the maximum resolution available. With the help of the scale data attached to the image and the directional and distance information from the rear of the cottage shown in the case file, Gurney was able to narrow the location of the murder weapon’s discovery to a fairly small area in the thicket about a hundred feet from Badger Lane. So after leaving the cottage through the back window, Flores walked or ran out there, partially covered the blade of the still-bloody weapon with some dirt and leaves, and then … what? Managed to get to the road without leaving any further scent for the dogs to follow? Headed down the hill to Kiki Muller’s house? Or was she right there on the road in her car—waiting to help him escape, waiting to run off with him to a new life they’d been planning together?
Or did Flores simply walk back to the cottage? Is that why the scent trail went no farther than the machete? Is it conceivable that Flores concealed himself in or around the cottage itself—concealed himself so effectively that a swarm of troopers, detectives, and crime-scene techs failed to discover him? That seemed unlikely.
As Gurney looked up from his laptop screen, he was startled to see Madeleine sitting at the end of the table, watching him—so startled that he jumped in his seat.
“Jesus! How long have you been there?”
She shrugged, made no effort to answer.
“What time is it?” he asked, and immediately saw the inanity of the question. The clock over the sideboard was in his line of sight, not hers. The time, 10:55
P.M.
, was also displayed on the computer screen in front of him.