Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel (29 page)

“There are more than three.”

“How do you know that?”

“As I explained before, I was told—”

Ashton cut in. “Yes, yes, I know, some unnamed person told you that they couldn’t reach some of our former students, also unnamed. That in itself means nothing. Let’s not mix apples and oranges, leap to some awful conclusion, and use it as a pretext for destroying the school’s guarantees of privacy.”

“Doctor, you just called me. You sounded concerned. Now you’re telling me there’s nothing to be concerned about. You’re not making a lot of sense.”

He could hear Ashton breathing a bit shakily. After a long five seconds, the man spoke in a more subdued voice.

“I just don’t want to pull the whole structure of the school down on our heads. Look, here’s what I propose: I’ll continue making calls. I’ll try to call every contact number I have for recent graduates. That way we can find out if there’s a serious pattern here before we cause irreversible damage to Mapleshade. Believe me, I’m not trying to be pointlessly obstructive. If we discover any additional examples …”

“All right, Doctor, make the calls. But be aware that I intend to pass along what I already know to BCI.”

“Do what you have to do. But please remember how little you actually
know
. Don’t destroy a legacy of trust on the basis of a guess.”

“I get your point. Eloquently expressed.” Ashton’s easy eloquence was, in fact, starting to get on Gurney’s nerves. “But speaking of the institution’s legacy, or mission, or reputation, or whatever you want to call it, I understand you made some dramatic changes in that area yourself a few years ago—some might say risky changes.”

Ashton answered simply, “Yes, I did. Tell me how the changes were described to you, and I’ll tell you the reason for them.”

“I’ll paraphrase: ‘Scott Ashton upended the institution’s mission, turned it from a facility that treated the treatable into a holding pen for incurable monsters.’ I think that captures the gist of it.”

Ashton uttered a small sigh. “I suppose that’s the way
someone
might see it, especially if his career didn’t benefit from the change.”

Gurney ignored the apparent swipe at Simon Kale. “How do
you
see it?”

“This country has an overabundance of therapeutic boarding schools for neurotics. What it lacks are residential environments where the problems of sexual abuse and destructive sexual obsessions can be addressed creatively and effectively. I’m trying to correct that imbalance.”

“And you’re happy with the way it’s working?”

There was the sound of a longer sigh. “The treatment of certain mental disorders is medieval. With the bar set so low, making improvements is not as difficult as you might think. When you have a free hour or two, we can go into it in more detail. Right now I’d rather proceed with those phone calls.”

Gurney checked the time on his car dashboard. “And I have a meeting I’m already five minutes late for. Please let me know what you can, as soon as you can. Oh—one last thing, Doctor. I assume you have phone numbers and addresses for Alessandro and for Karnala Fashion?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Gurney said nothing.

“You’re talking about the ad? Why would I have their numbers?”

“I assumed you’d gotten that photo on your wall from either the photographer or the company that commissioned it.”

“No. As a matter of fact, Jillian was the one who got it. She gave it to me as a wedding present. She gave it to me that morning. The morning of the wedding.”

T
he County Office Building had an unusual history. Prior to 1935 it was known as the Bumblebee Lunatic Asylum—named after the eccentric British transplant Sir George Bumblebee, who endowed it with his entire estate in 1899 and who, his disinherited relatives argued, was as insane as any prospective resident. It was a history that provided endless fodder for local wags commenting on the workings of the government agencies that had been located there ever since the county took the place over during the Great Depression.

The dark brick edifice sat like an oppressive paperweight holding down the north side of the town square. The much-needed sandblasting to remove a century of grime was put off each year to the following year, the victim of a perennial budget crisis. In the mid-sixties, the inside had been gutted and redone. Fluorescent lights and plasterboard were installed in place of cracked globes and warped wainscoting. The elaborate lobby security apparatus that Gurney remembered from his visits to the building during the Mellery case was still in place and still frustratingly slow. Once one was past that barrier, however, the rectangular layout of the building was simple, and a minute later he was opening a frosted-glass door on which
DISTRICT ATTORNEY
appeared in elegant black letters.

He recognized the woman in the cashmere sweater behind the reception desk: Ellen Rackoff, the DA’s intensely sexy, though far from young, personal assistant. The look in her eyes was arrestingly cool and experienced.

“You’re late,” she said in her cashmere voice. The fact that she
didn’t ask his name was the only acknowledgment that she remembered him from the Mellery case. “Come with me.” She led him back out through the glass door and down a corridor to a door with a black plastic sign on it that read
CONFERENCE ROOM
.

“Good luck.”

He opened the door and thought for a moment he’d been brought to the wrong meeting. There were several people in the room, but the one person he’d expected to be there, Sheridan Kline, wasn’t among them. He realized he was probably in the right place after all when he saw Captain Rodriguez of the state police glowering at him from the opposite side of the big round table that filled half the windowless room.

Rodriguez was a short, fleshy man with a closed face and a carefully coiffed mass of thick black hair, obviously dyed. His blue suit was immaculate, his shirt whiter than white, his tie bloodred. Glasses with thin steel frames emphasized dark, resentful eyes. Sitting on his left was Arlo Blatt, who was looking at Gurney with small, unfriendly eyes. The colorless man on Rodriguez’s right showed no emotion beyond a faintly depressed quality that Gurney guessed was more constitutional than situational. He gave Gurney the appraising once-over that cops automatically give strangers, looked at his watch, and yawned. Across from this trio, his chair pushed back a good three feet from the table, Jack Hardwick sat with his eyes closed and his arms folded on his chest, as if being in the same room with these people had put him to sleep.

“Hello, Dave.” The voice was strong, clear, female, and familiar. The source was a tall, auburn-haired woman standing by a separate table in the far corner of the room—a woman with a striking resemblance to the young Sigourney Weaver.

“Rebecca! I didn’t know that … that you …”

“Neither did I. Sheridan called this morning, asked if I could find the time. It worked out, so here I am. Like some coffee?”

“Thank you.”

“Black?”

“Sure.” He preferred it with milk and sugar but for some reason didn’t want to tell her she’d guessed wrong.

Rebecca Holdenfield was a well-known profiler Gurney had met
and come to respect, despite his doubts about profilers in general, when they were both working on the Mellery case. He wondered what her presence might signify about the DA’s view of the case.

Just then the door opened, and the DA himself strode into the room. Sheridan Kline was, as usual, radiating a sparky sort of energy. His rapidly moving gaze, like a burglar’s flashlight, took in the room in a couple of seconds. “Becca! Thank you! Appreciate your making the time to be here. Dave! Detective Dave, the man who’s been stirring the pot! Reason we’re all here. And Rod!” He grinned brightly at Rodriguez’s sour face. “Good of you to make it on such short notice. Glad you were able to bring your people along.” He glanced without interest at the bodies flanking the captain, his gladness a transparent lie. Kline liked an audience, Gurney reflected, but he liked it to be composed of people who mattered.

Holdenfield came to the table with two black coffees, gave Gurney one of them, and sat down next to him.

“Senior Investigator Hardwick here is not currently assigned to the case,” Kline went on to no one in particular, “but he was involved at the beginning, and I thought it would be helpful to have all our relevant resources in the room at the same time.”

Another transparent lie, Gurney thought. What Kline found “helpful” was to throw cats and dogs in together and watch what happened. He was a rabid fan of the adversarial process for getting at the truth and motivating people—the angrier the adversaries, the better. The vibe in the room was hostile, which Gurney figured accounted for the energy level in Kline, which was now approaching the hum of a high-voltage transformer.

“Rod, while I get some coffee here, why don’t you summarize BCI’s approach to the case so far. We’re here to listen and learn.”

Gurney thought he heard Hardwick, slouching in his chair on the far side of Rebecca Holdenfield, groan.

“I’ll keep this brief,” said the captain. “In the matter of the Jillian Perry murder, we know what was done, when it was done, and how it was done. We know who did it, and our efforts have been concentrated on finding that individual and taking him into custody. In pursuit of this objective, we’ve mobilized one of the largest
manhunts in the history of the bureau. It is massive, painstaking, and ongoing.”

Another muted sound emanated from Hardwick’s direction.

The captain’s elbows were planted on the table, his left fist buried in his right hand. He shot Hardwick a warning glance. “So far we’ve conducted over three hundred interviews, and we’re continuing to expand the radius of our inquiries. Bill—Lieutenant Anderson—and Arlo here are responsible for guiding and monitoring the day-to-day progress.”

Kline came to the table with his coffee but remained standing. “Maybe Bill could give us a feeling for the current status. What do we know today that we didn’t know, say, a week after the beheading?”

Lieutenant Anderson blinked and cleared his throat. “What we didn’t know …? Well, I’d say we’ve eliminated a lot of possibilities.” When it became apparent from the stares fixed on him that this was not an adequate response, he cleared his throat again. “There were a lot of things that might have happened that we know now didn’t happen. We’ve eliminated a lot of possibilities, and we’ve developed a sharper picture of the suspect. A real nutcase.”

“What possibilities have you eliminated?” asked Kline.

“Well, we know that no one observed Flores leaving the Tambury area. There’s no record of his calling any cab company, no car-rental record, and none of the bus drivers who make local pickups recall anyone like him. In fact, we couldn’t find anyone who saw him at any time after the murder.”

Kline blinked in confusion. “Okay, but I don’t quite understand …”

Anderson continued blandly. “Sometimes what we don’t find is as important as what we do. Lab analyses showed that Flores had scoured the cottage to the point where there was zero trace evidence of himself or anyone other than the victim. He took incredible care in erasing everything that might carry analyzable DNA. Even the traps under the bathroom and kitchen sinks had been scrubbed. We’ve also interviewed every available Latino laborer within a fifty-mile radius of Tambury, and not a single one was able or willing to tell us anything about Flores. Without prints or DNA
or a date of entry into the country, Immigration can’t help us. Ditto the authorities in Mexico. The identikit composite is too generic to be of much use. Everyone we interviewed thought it looked like somebody they knew, but no two people identified the same person. As for Kiki Muller, the next-door neighbor who disappeared with Flores, no one has seen her since the murder.”

Kline look exasperated. “Sounds like you’re telling me the investigation has gotten nowhere.”

Anderson glanced at Rodriguez. Rodriguez studied his fist.

Blatt made his first comment of the meeting. “It’s a matter of time.”

Everyone looked at him.

“We have people in that community keeping their eyes and ears open. Eventually Flores will surface, shoot his mouth off to the wrong person. Then we scoop him up.”

Hardwick was peering at his fingernails as though they were suspicious growths. “What ‘community’ would that be, Arlo?”

“Illegal aliens, who else?”

“Suppose he’s not Mexican.”

“So he’s Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, whatever. We’ve got people poking around in all those communities. Eventually …” He shrugged.

Kline’s antenna tuned in to the conflict. “What are you getting at, Jack?”

Rodriguez stepped in stiffly. “Hardwick has been out of the loop for some time. Bill and Arlo are your best sources for current information.”

Kline acted like he didn’t hear him. “Jack?”

Hardwick smiled. “Tell you what. Why don’t you listen to what Ace Detective Gurney here has uncovered in less than four days, which is a shitload more than we’ve come up with in four months.”

Kline’s voltage was rising. “Dave? What have you got?”

“What I’ve uncovered,” began Gurney slowly, “are mostly questions—questions that suggest new directions for the investigation.” He placed his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “One key element that deserves more attention is the victim’s background. Jillian was sexually abused as a child and became an abuser
of other children. She was aggressive, manipulative, and reportedly had sociopathic traits. The possibility of a revenge motive arising out of that kind of behavior is significant.”

Blatt’s expression was screwed up in a knot. “You’re trying to tell us that Jillian Perry sexually abused Hector Flores when he was a little kid and that’s why he killed her? That sounds nuts.”

“I agree. Especially since Flores was probably at least ten years older than Jillian. But suppose he was taking revenge for something done to someone else. Or suppose he himself had been so severely abused, so traumatically, that it affected the balance of his mind, and he decided to take out his rage on all abusers. Suppose Flores found out about Mapleshade, about the nature of its clientele, about Dr. Ashton’s work. Is it possible that he might show up at Ashton’s house, try to get odd jobs, ingratiate himself, wait for an opportunity to make a dramatic gesture?”