Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel (3 page)

“His view was that we should bring in for questioning every Mexican within twenty miles of the crime and threaten them with all kinds of crap until one of them led us to Hector Flores, and if that didn’t work, we should extend the radius to fifty miles. That’s where he wanted all the resources—one hundred percent.”

“You didn’t agree with that?”

“There were other avenues worth exploring. It’s possible Hector was not what he appeared to be. The whole thing had a funny feel to it.”

“So what happened?”

“I told Rodriguez he was full of shit.”

“Really?” Gurney smiled for the first time.

“Yeah, really. So I was taken off the case. And it was given to Blatt.”

“Blatt!?” The name tasted like a mouthful of food gone bad. He remembered Investigator Arlo Blatt as the only BCI detective more irritating than Rodriguez. Blatt embodied an attitude Gurney’s favorite college professor long ago had described as “ignorance armed and ready for battle.”

Hardwick went on. “So Blatt did exactly what Rodriguez told him to do, and he got nowhere. Four months have passed, and we know less today than when we started. But I can tell you’re wondering, what’s all this got to do with Dave Gurney?”

“The question did cross my mind.”

“The mother of the bride is not satisfied. She suspects that the investigation’s been botched. She has no confidence in Rodriguez, she thinks Blatt’s an idiot. But she thinks you’re a genius.”

“She thinks what?”

“She came to me last week—four months to the day after the murder, wondering if I could get back on the case or, if I couldn’t do that, could I work on it without anybody knowing. I told her that wouldn’t be a practical approach, my hands were tied, I was already on pretty thin ice with the bureau—however, I did happen to have personal access to the most highly decorated detective in the history of the NYPD, recently retired, still full of vim and vigor, a man who would be more than happy to provide her with an alternative to the Rodriguez-Blatt approach. To put the icing on the cake, I just happened to have a copy of that adoring little piece that
New York
magazine did on you after you cracked the Satanic Santa case. What was it they called you—Supercop? She was impressed.”

Gurney grimaced. Several possible responses collided in his head, all canceling each other out.

Hardwick seemed encouraged by his silence. “She’d love to meet you. Oh, did I mention? She’s drop-dead gorgeous, early forties but looks about thirty-two. And she made it clear that money wasn’t an issue. You could pretty much name your price. Seriously—two
hundred dollars an hour would not be a problem. Not that you’d be motivated by anything as common as money.”

“Speaking of motives, what’s in it for you?”

Hardwick’s effort to sound innocent instead sounded comical. “Seeing justice done? Helping out a family that’s been through hell? I mean, losing a child’s got to be the worst thing in the world, right?”

Gurney froze. The mention of losing a child still had the power to send a tremor through his heart. It was more than fifteen years since Danny, barely four at the time, had stepped into the street when Gurney wasn’t looking, but grief, he’d discovered, was not an experience you went through once and then “moved on” (as the idiotic popular phrase would have it). The truth was that it came over you in successive waves—waves separated by periods of numbness, periods of forgetfulness, periods of ordinary living.

“You still there?”

Gurney grunted.

Hardwick went on. “I want to do what I can for these people. Besides—”

“Besides,” Gurney broke in, speaking fast, forcing his debilitating emotion aside, “if I did get involved, which I have no intention of doing, it would drive Rodriguez batshit, wouldn’t it? And if I managed to come up with something, something new, something significant, it would make him and Blatt look really bad, wouldn’t it? Might that be one of your perfectly good reasons?”

Hardwick cleared his throat again. “That’s a fucked-up way of looking at it. Fact is, we got a tragically bereaved mother here who isn’t satisfied with the progress of the police investigation—which I can understand, since the incompetent Arlo Blatt and his crew have rousted every Mexican in the county and haven’t come up with so much as a taco fart. She’s desperate for a real detective. So I’m laying this golden egg in your lap.”

“That’s great, Jack, but I’m not in the PI business.”

“For the love of God, Davey, just talk to her. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Just talk to her. She’s lonely, vulnerable, beautiful, with big bucks to burn. And deep down inside, Davey boy, deep down
inside there’s something wild in that woman. I guarantee it. Cross my heart and hope to die!”

“Jack, the last thing I need right now—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re happily married, in love with your wife, yadda, yadda, yadda. All right. Fine. And maybe you don’t care about a chance to reveal Rod Rodriguez finally and absolutely as the total asshole he really is. Okay. But this case is
complex.
” He gave the word a depth of meaning, made it sound like the most precious of all characteristics. “It’s got
layers
to it, Davey. It’s a fucking onion.”

“So?”

“You’re a natural-born onion peeler—the best that ever was.”

W
hen Gurney finally noticed Madeleine at the den door, he wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there, nor even how long he himself had been at the den window facing the back pasture that ran up toward the wooded ridge behind the house. To save his life, he could not have described the pasture’s current pattern of blazing goldenrod, browning grasses, and wild blue asters at which he had appeared to be gazing, but he could have come very close to reciting Hardwick’s telephone narrative word for word.

“So?” said Madeleine.

“So?” he repeated, as though he hadn’t understood the question.

She smiled impatiently.

“That was Jack Hardwick.” He was about to ask if she remembered Jack Hardwick, chief investigator on the Mellery case, when the look in her eyes told him he didn’t need to ask. It was the look she got whenever a name came up that was associated with that terrible chain of murders.

She stared at him, waiting, unblinking.

“He wants my advice.”

Still she waited.

“He wants me to speak to the mother of a girl who was killed. She was killed on her wedding day.” He was about to say how she was killed, describe the peculiar details, but realized that would be a mistake.

Madeleine nodded almost imperceptibly.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I’d been wondering how long it would take.”

“How long …?”

“For you to find another … situation that required your attention.”

“All I’m going to do is talk to her.”

“Right. And then, after a nice long talk, you’ll conclude that there’s nothing especially interesting about a woman being killed on her wedding day, and you’ll yawn and walk away. Is that the way you see it?”

His voice tightened reflexively. “I don’t know enough yet to see it in any particular way.”

She gave him her patented skeptical smile. “I have to go,” she said. Then, seeming to notice the question in his eyes, she added, “The clinic, remember? See you back here tonight.” And she was gone.

At first he just stared at the empty doorway. Then he thought he should go after her, started to do so, got as far as the middle of the kitchen, stopped, and wondered what he would say, had no idea, thought he should go after her anyway, went out the side door by the garden. But by the time he got around to the front of the house, her car was halfway down the rough little farm lane that bisected the low pasture. He wondered if she saw him in her rearview mirror, wondered if it made a difference that he’d come out after her.

In recent months he’d imagined that things were going pretty well. The raw emotion at the end of the Mellery nightmare had evolved into an imperfect peace. He and Madeleine had slipped smoothly, gradually, mostly unconsciously into affectionate or at least tolerant patterns of behavior that resembled separate elliptical orbits. While he gave his occasional lectures at the state police academy, she had accepted a part-time position in the local mental-health clinic, doing intakes and assessments. It was a function for which her LCSW credentials and experience clearly overqualified her, but it seemed to have provided a sense of balance in their marriage, a relief from the pressure of their unrealistic expectations of each other. Or was that just wishful thinking?

Wishful thinking. The universal anodyne.

He stood in the matted, drought-wilted grass and watched her car disappear behind the barn onto the narrow town road. His feet
were cold. He looked down and discovered he had come outside in his socks, which were now absorbing the morning dew. As he turned to go back into the house, a movement by the barn caught his eye.

A lone coyote had emerged from the woods and was loping across the clearing between the barn and the pond. Partway across, the animal stopped, turning its head toward Gurney, and studied him for a long ten seconds. It was an intelligent look, thought Gurney. A look of pure, unemotional calculation.

“W
hat goal is common to every undercover assignment?”

Gurney’s question was greeted by various expressions of interest and confusion on the thirty-nine faces in the academy classroom. Most guest instructors started their lectures by introducing themselves and giving their résumé highlights, then presented an outline of the subjects to be covered, content and objectives, blah, blah, blah—a general overview to which no one paid much attention. Gurney preferred a cut-to-the-chase approach, particularly for a seminar group like this, made up of experienced officers. And they’d know who he was, anyway. He had a definite reputation in law-enforcement circles. Professionally, the reputation was about as good as it gets in that world, and since his retirement from the NYPD two years earlier, it had only gotten better—if being regarded with increasing levels of respect, awe, envy, and resentment could be considered “better.” Personally, he wished he had no reputation at all, no image to live up to. Or fall short of.

“Think about it,” he said with quiet intensity, making eye contact with as many people in the room as he could. “What’s the one thing you need to achieve in every undercover situation? This is an important question. I’d like to get a response from each of you.”

A hand went up in the front row. The face, set atop a hulking offensive lineman’s body, was young and baffled. “Wouldn’t the goal be different in every case?”

“The
situation
would be different,” said Gurney, nodding agreeably. “The people would be different. The risks and rewards would be different. The depth and duration of your immersion in the
environment would be different. The persona you project, your cover story, could be very different. The nature of the intelligence or evidence to be acquired would vary from case to case. There are definitely lots of differences. But”—he paused, again making as much eye contact as possible before continuing with rising emphasis—“there’s one goal common to every assignment. It’s your primary goal as an undercover officer. Your success in achieving every other goal of an operation hangs on your success in achieving this primary goal. Your life depends on it. Tell me what you think it is.”

For nearly half a minute, there was absolute silence, the only movement the formation of thoughtful frowns. Waiting for the replies he knew would eventually come, Gurney glanced around at his physical surroundings—the concrete-block walls with their matte beige paint; the vinyl-tile floor whose brown-and-tan pattern was indistinguishable from the scuff marks that obscured it; the rows of long, speckled-gray Formica tables, shabby with age, serving as shared desks; the stark orange plastic chairs with tubular chrome legs, too small for their large and muscular occupants, their brightness oddly depressing. A time capsule of mid-seventies architectural awfulness, the room created a bleak echo of his last city precinct.

“Gathering accurate information?” offered a questioning face in the second row.

“A reasonable guess,” said Gurney encouragingly. “Anyone have any other ideas?”

Half a dozen suggestions followed rapidly, mostly from the front of the room, mostly variations on the accurate-information theme.

“Any other ideas?” Gurney prodded.

“Goal is to get the bad guys off the street,” came a comment in a weary growl from the back row.

“Prevent crime,” said another.

“Get the truth, the whole truth, the facts, names, find out what’s going down, who’s doing what to who, what the plan is, who’s the man, who sits on top of the food chain, follow the money, shit like that. Basically, you want to know everything there is to be known—it’s that simple.” The dark, wiry man who rattled off this litany of goals with his arms folded across his chest was sitting directly in front of where Gurney was standing. His smirk announced that
there was no more to be said on the subject. The name on the tent card nearest him on the long table read “Det. Falcone.”

“Any other ideas?” asked Gurney blandly, scanning the far corners of the room. The wiry man looked disgusted.

After a long pause, one of the three women attendees spoke up in a low but confident Hispanic-accented voice. “Establish and maintain trust.”

“What was that?” The question came from three different directions at once.

“Establish and maintain trust,” she repeated, a bit louder.

“Interesting,” said Gurney. “What makes that the most important goal?”

She gave a little shrug as though the answer were the most obvious thing on earth. “Because if you don’t have their trust, you have nothing.”