Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel (34 page)

“Why don’t you just call him?” Madeleine was watching him, her knitting needles resting in her lap atop a half-finished orange scarf.

He stared at her, a little startled but not so utterly amazed as he once would have been at this uncanny sensitivity.

“It’s a certain look you get when you’re thinking about him,” she said, as if explaining something obvious. “Not a happy look.”

“I will. I’ll call.”

He began scanning the ViCAP form with a fresh urgency, like a man in a locked room searching for a hidden exit. Nothing emerged that seemed new or different from what he’d remembered. He shuffled through the other reports in the folder.

One of several analyses of the wedding-reception DVD material concluded with this summary:
“Locations of all persons present on the Ashton property during the time frame of the homicide have been verified through time-coded video imagery.”
Gurney had a pretty good idea what this meant, recalling what Hardwick had told
him the evening they watched the video, but given its critical significance, he wanted to be sure.

He got his cell phone from the sideboard and called Hardwick’s number. He was shunted immediately into voice mail:
“Hardwick. Leave a message.”

“It’s Gurney. I have a question about the video.”

Less than a minute after he left the message, his phone rang. He didn’t bother to check the caller ID. “Jack?”

“Dave?” It was a woman’s voice—familiar, but he couldn’t immediately place it.

“Sorry, I was expecting someone else. This is Dave.”

“It’s Peggy Meeker. I got your e-mail, and I just e-mailed you back. Then I thought I should call you in case you might need to know this right away.” Her voice was racing with excitement.

“What is it?”

“You wanted to know about Edward Vallory’s play, plot, characters, whether anything was known about it. Well, you’re not going to believe this, but I called the English department at Wesleyan, and guess who’s still there—Professor Barkless, who taught the course.”

“The course?”

“The English course I took. The Elizabethan-drama course. I left a message, and he got back to me. Isn’t that amazing?”

“What did he tell you?”

“Well, that’s the really, really amazing part. Are you ready for this?”

There was a call-waiting beep on Gurney’s phone, which he ignored. “Go ahead.”

“Well, to begin with, the name of the play was
The Spanish Gardener.
” She paused for a reaction.

“Go on.”

“The name of the central character was Hector Flores.”

“You’re serious?”

“There’s more. It gets better and better. The plot, which was partially described by a contemporary critic, is one of those complicated things where people wear disguises and people in their own families don’t recognize them and all that kind of nonsense, but the
basic story line”—there was another call-waiting beep—“which is pretty wild, is that Hector Flores was sent away from home by his mother, who killed his father and seduced his brother. Years later Hector returns, disguised as a gardener, and to make a long story short, he tricks his brother—through more disguises and mistaken identities—into cutting off his mother’s head. It was all pretty much over the top, which is maybe why all the copies of the play were destroyed after the first performance. It’s not clear if the plot was based on some ancient variant of the Oedipus myth or if it was just a piece of grotesquerie cooked up by Vallory. Or maybe it was somehow influenced by Thomas Kyd’s
Spanish Tragedy
, which is kind of emotionally over the top, too, so who knows? But those are the basic facts—straight from Professor Barkless.”

Gurney’s brain was racing faster than Peggy Meeker’s breathless voice.

After a moment she asked, “You want me to go through that again?”

Another beep.

“You said it was all in an e-mail you sent me?”

“Yes, all spelled out. And I put in my professor’s phone number, in case you want to call him directly. It’s so exciting, isn’t it? Does it give you, like, a whole new perspective on the case?”

“Maybe more like a reinforcement of one of the existing perspectives. We’ll see how it plays out.”

“Right. Okay. Let me know.”

Beep.

“Peggy, I seem to have a persistent caller here. Let me say good-bye for now. And thank you. This could be very helpful.”

“Sure, glad to do it. Great. Let me know what else I can do.”

“I will. Thank you again.”

He switched to the other call.

“Took you long enough to answer. Question mustn’t be too fucking urgent.”

“Ah, yes. Jack. Thanks for getting back.”

“And the question is …?”

Gurney smiled. Hardwick made a fetish of brusqueness, when
he wasn’t too busy making a fetish of vulgarity. “How sure are you about the location of every individual at the reception during the time Jillian was in the cottage?”

“Sure enough.”

“How do you know?”

“The way the cameras were set up, there were no blind spots. Guests, catering staff, musicians—they were all on tape, all the time.”

“Except for Hector.”

“Except for Hector, who was in the cottage.”

“Who you
think
was in the cottage.”

“What’s your point?”

“Just trying to sort out what we know from what we think we know.”

“Who the fuck else would be in there?”

“I don’t know, Jack. And neither do you. By the way, thanks for the heads-up on that rehab jam-up.”

There was a long silence. “Fuck told you about that?”

“You sure as hell didn’t.”

“Fuck’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’m a big fan of full disclosure, Jack.”

“Full disclosure? I’ll give you full fucking disclosure. Dickbrain Rodriguez took me off the Perry case because I told him that chasing down every fucking Mexican illegal in upstate New York was the biggest fucking waste of time I’d ever been assigned to. First of all, no one was going to admit working there illegally, evading taxes. And they sure as hell weren’t going to admit having any contact with someone wanted for murder. Two months later, on my day off, I get called into an emergency manhunt situation for a couple of idiots who shot a gas-station attendant on the thruway, and somebody at the scene tells Captain Marvel that I smelled of alcohol, so I get jammed up. The little fuck had been dreaming of ways to get me on the wrong foot. Now he’s got his opportunity. So what does he do? Little fuck sticks me in a fucking dump rehab full of crackhead scumbags. Twenty-eight miserable fucking days. With scumbags, Davey! Fucking nightmare! Scumbags! All I could think about
for twenty-eight days was killing little Dickbrain Captain Fuckface, tearing his fucking head off! That enough full disclosure for you?”

“Plenty, Jack. Problem is, the investigation went off the rails, and it needs to start over from scratch. And it needs to have people assigned to it who are more interested in solving it than they are in messing each other up.”

“Is that a fucking fact? Well, good fucking luck, Mr. Voice of Fucking Reason.”

The connection was broken.

Gurney put the phone down on top of the case folder. He became aware of the clicking of Madeleine’s knitting needles and looked over at her.

She smiled without looking up. “Problems?”

He laughed humorlessly. “Only that the investigation needs to be completely reorganized and redirected, and I have no power to make that happen.”

“Think about it. You’ll find a way.”

He thought about it. “You mean through Kline?”

She shrugged. “You told me during the Mellery case that he had big ambitions.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he imagined himself president one day. Or at least governor.”

“Well, there you go.”

“There I go where?”

She concentrated for a minute on an alteration in her stitching technique. Then she looked up, seemingly bemused by his failure to grasp the obvious. “Help him see how this connects to his big ambitions.”

The more he pondered it, the more perceptive her comment seemed. As a political animal, Kline was super-sensitive to the media dimension of any investigation. It was the surest route to the center of his being.

Gurney picked up his phone and called the DA’s number. The recorded message offered three options: call again between 8:00
A.M
. and 6:00
P.M
. Monday through Friday, or leave a name and phone number to receive a return call during business hours, or call the
emergency twenty-four-hour number for matters requiring immediate assistance.

Gurney entered the emergency number in his phone list, but before making the call he decided to devote a little more time to structuring what he was going to say—first to the screener, then to Kline if the call was passed through—because he realized it was crucial to lob exactly the right grenade over the wall.

The needles stopped clicking.

“Do you hear that?” Madeleine leaned her head slightly in the direction of the nearest window.

“What?”

“Listen.”

“What am I listening for?”

“Shhh …”

Just as he was about to insist that he could hear nothing, he heard it: the faint yipping of distant coyotes. Then, again, nothing. Only the lingering image in his mind of animals like small, lean wolves, running in a loosely spaced pack, running wild and heartless as the wind through a moonlit field beyond the north ridge.

The phone, still in his hand, rang. He checked the ID:
REYNOLDS GALLERY
. He glanced at Madeleine. Nothing in her expression suggested a clairvoyant insight into the identity of the caller.

“This is Dave.”

“I want to go to bed. Let’s talk.”

After an awkward silence, Gurney replied, “You first.”

She uttered a soft, intimate laugh—really more purring than laughing. “I mean I want to go to bed early, go to sleep, and in case you were going to call later to talk about tomorrow, it would be better to talk now.”

“Good idea.”

Again the velvety laugh. “So what I’m thinking is very simple. I can’t tell you what to say to Jykynstyl, because I don’t know what he’ll ask you. So you must be yourself. The wise homicide detective. The quiet man who has seen everything. The man on the side of the angels who wrestles with the devil and always wins.”

“Not always.”

“Well, you’re human, right? Being human is important. This
makes you real, not some fake hero, you see? So all you need to do is be yourself. You are a more impressive man than you think, David Gurney.”

He hesitated. “Is that it?”

This time the laugh was more musical, more amused. “That’s it for you. Now for me. Did you ever read our contract, the one you signed for the show last year?”

“I suppose I did at the time. Not recently.”

“It says that the Reynolds Gallery is entitled to a forty percent commission on displayed works, thirty percent on cataloged works, and twenty percent on all future works created for customers introduced to the artist through the gallery. Does this sound familiar?”

“Vaguely.”

“Vaguely. Okay. But is it all right, or do you have any problem with it now, going forward?”

“It’s fine.”

“Good. Because we’ll have a very good time working together. I can feel it, can’t you?”

Madeleine, inscrutable, seemed fixated on the ornamental border of her slowly growing scarf. Stitch after stitch after stitch. Click. Click. Click.

I
t was a glorious morning, a calendar picture of autumn. The sky was a thrilling blue without a hint of a cloud. Madeleine was already out on one of her bike rides through the winding river valley that extended for nearly twenty miles to both the east and west sides of Walnut Crossing.

“A perfect day,” she’d said before she left, managing to suggest by her tone that his decision to spend a day like this in the city talking about big money for ugly art made him as crazy as Jykynstyl. Or maybe he’d reached that conclusion himself and was blaming it on her.

He was sitting at the breakfast table by the French doors, gazing out over the pasture at the barn, a startling crimson in the limpid morning light. He took the first energizing sip of his coffee, then picked up his phone and called Sheridan Kline’s twenty-four-hour number.

It was answered by a dour, colorless voice—which brought to Gurney’s mind a vivid recollection of the man who owned it.

“Stimmel. District Attorney’s Office.”

“This is Dave Gurney.” He paused, knowing that Stimmel would remember him from the Mellery case and being not at all surprised when the man didn’t acknowledge it. Stimmel had the warmth and loquacity, as well as the thick physiognomy, of a frog.

“Yes?”

“I need to talk to Kline ASAP.”

“That so?”

“Matter of life or death.”

“Whose?”

“His.”

The dour tone hardened. “What does that mean?”

“You’re familiar with the Perry case?” Gurney took the ensuing silence for a yes. “It’s about to explode into a media circus, maybe the biggest mass-murder case in the history of the state. Thought Sheridan might want a heads-up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You asked me that already, and I told you.”

“Give me the facts, wiseass, and I’ll pass them along.”

“No time to go through it all twice. I need to talk to him
right now
, even if you have to drag his ass off the can. Tell him this one’s going to make the Mellery murder look like a misdemeanor.”

“This better not be bullshit.”

Gurney figured that was Stimmel’s way of saying,
Good-bye, we’ll get back to you
. He laid down his phone, picked up his coffee, and took another sip. Still nice and warm. He looked out at the asparagus ferns leaning away from a gentle westerly breeze. The fertilizer questions—if, when, how much—that had filled his mind less than a week ago now seemed infinitely postponable. He hoped he hadn’t overstated the situation to Stimmel.