Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel (44 page)

Rodriguez seemed pleased by her formality. “All right, Gerson, what is it?”

“We’ve been informed that one of the young women on our call-and-locate list was the victim of a homicide three months ago.”

“Three months ago?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have the specifics?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go ahead.”

Her expression was as stiff as the starched collar of her shirt. “Name, Melanie Strum. Age eighteen. Graduated May first of this year from Mapleshade Academy. Last seen by her mother and stepfather in Scarsdale, New York, on May sixth. Her body was recovered from the basement of a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, on June twelfth.”

Rodriguez grimaced. “Cause of death?”

Gerson’s lips tightened.

“Cause of death?” he repeated.

“Her head was cut off. Sir.”

Rodriguez stared at Gerson. “How did this information come to us?”

“Through our outgoing calling process. Melanie Strum’s name was on the list subset assigned to me. I made the call.”

“Who did you speak to?”

She hesitated. “May I get my notes, sir?”

“Quickly, if you don’t mind.”

During the minute she was gone, the only person who spoke was Kline. “This could be it,” he said with an excited smile. “This could be the breakthrough.”

Anderson made a face like a man with a sore on the inside of his lip. Hardwick looked intensely interested. Wigg was inscrutable. Gurney was less disturbed than he would have been comfortable admitting. He told himself that his lack of shock or sadness was due to the fact that he had from the beginning assumed that the missing girls were dead. (On occasion, when he was alone and exhausted, some inner defense system would be breached and he would see himself as a man so emotionally disconnected from the lives of others, so lopsidedly devoted to his puzzle-solving agenda, that he hardly qualified as a member of the human family at all. However, that troubling vision would pass with a good night’s sleep, after which he would rationalize his lack of feeling as the normal by-product of a law-enforcement career.)

Gerson stepped back into the room, carrying a flip-top notepad. Her brown hair was pulled back severely into a tight ponytail, giving her features a skull-like immobility.

“Captain, I have the information on the Strum call.”

“Go ahead.”

She consulted her pad. “The phone was answered by Roger Strum, Melanie’s stepfather. When I explained the purpose of the call, he expressed confusion, then anger at the fact that we didn’t already know that Melanie was dead. His wife, Dana Strum, joined the conversation on the extension. They were upset. They provided the following facts: Acting on a tip, the Palm Beach police had entered the home of Jordan Ballston and discovered Melanie’s body in a basement freezer. The police—”

Kline interrupted. “Jordan Ballston, the hedge-fund guy?”

“There was no specific mention of a hedge fund, but in my follow-up call to the Palm Beach PD, they did say Ballston lived in a multi-million-dollar mansion.”

“The fucking freezer?” muttered Blatt, as though food-contamination concerns were making him queasy.

“Okay,” said Rodriguez, “keep going.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Strum mostly went on about how outraged they were that Ballston was out on bail. Who was he paying off? Did he have the judge in his pocket? Remarks like that. Mr. Strum indicated that if Ballston managed to buy himself out of this, he would personally ‘put a bullet in the bastard’s head.’ He repeated that several times. I was able to ascertain that they did have an argument with Melanie on May sixth, the day she left home, about a car she wanted them to buy for her—a Porsche Boxster that costs forty-seven thousand dollars. They say that she flew into a rage when they refused, said she hated them, didn’t want to live with them anymore, didn’t want to speak to them anymore. She said she was going to live with a friend. The following morning she was gone. The next time they saw her was when they ID’d the body in the Palm Beach morgue.”

“You said the local cops were acting on a tip when they found the body,” said Gurney. “Do we know anything more about that?”

She glanced at Rodriguez, apparently to confirm Gurney’s right to ask questions.

“Go ahead,” said the captain, with obvious mixed feelings.

She hesitated. “I told the chief investigating officer in Palm Beach that we had an interest in the case and we’d like as much information as possible. He said he’d be willing to talk to the person in charge of whatever investigation we had going on up here. He said he’d be available for the next half hour.”

After a few minutes of waffling on the pros and cons, the DA and the captain agreed that the call, with whatever information exchange would occur, would be a net plus all around. The conference room’s landline phone was moved to the center of the table around which they were all seated. Gerson dialed the direct number she’d been given by the detective in Palm Beach. She explained to him briefly who was in the room, then pushed the speakerphone button.

Rodriguez deferred to Kline, who provided the names and
titles of the people at the table and described the case as a possible missing-persons investigation in its earliest stages.

The faint southern accent of the man on the other end made him sound like he might be a native Floridian, a rare breed in that state and almost unheard-of in Palm Beach. “Being alone in my office here, I feel kind of outnumbered. I’m Detective Lieutenant Darryl Becker. I understand from the officer I spoke to earlier that you folks would like to know more about the Strum murder.”

“We sure would appreciate knowing as much as you can tell us, Darryl,” said Kline, who seemed to be absorbing and reflecting Becker’s drawl. “One question we have right off the bat here—what kind of tip was it that led you fellas to the body?”

“Not a particularly voluntary one.”

“How so?”

“The gentleman who offered the information was not what you’d call a public-spirited citizen helping out the forces of good. He acquired his information in a somewhat compromising manner.”

“The hell’s he talking about?” murmured Blatt, not quite under his breath.

“How so?” repeated Kline.

“Man’s a burglar. A professional burglar. That’s what he does for a living.”

“He was caught in Ballston’s house?”

“No, sir, he wasn’t. He was apprehended emerging from another house a week after breaking into the Ballston place. Burglar’s name happens to be Edgar Rodriguez—no relative of your captain there, I’m sure.”

A snorting one-syllable laugh burst out of Blatt.

The captain’s jaw muscles bulged. The remark seemed to anger him far out of proportion to its mindlessness.

“Let me guess,” said Kline. “Edgar was looking at serious prison time, and he offered to trade some information about Ballston’s basement, something he’d seen there, for a more lenient approach to his situation?”

“That would be it in a nutshell, Mr. Kline. By the way, how do you spell that?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your name. How do you spell your name?”

“K-L-I-N-E.”

“Ah, with a
K.
” Becker sounded disappointed. “Thought it might be like Patsy.”

“Excuse me?”

“Patsy Cline. Not important. Sorry for the diversion. Go ahead with your questions.”

It took Kline a moment to get back on track. “So … what he told you was sufficient for a warrant?”

“It was indeed.”

“And when you exercised that warrant, you found what?”

“Melanie Strum. In two pieces. Wrapped in aluminum foil. In the bottom of a freezer chest. Underneath a hundred pounds of chicken breasts. And a fair amount of frozen broccoli.”

Hardwick produced a snorting laugh of his own, louder than Blatt’s.

Kline looked baffled. “Why was your burglar unwrapping aluminum foil packages at the bottom of a freezer?”

“He said it’s the first place he always looks. He said people think it’s the
last
place a burglar would look, so that’s where they put their valuable stuff. He said you want to find the diamonds, look in the freezer. He thought it was pretty funny, all those people thinking they had a bright idea, thinking they were going to fool him, thinking they were smarter than he was. Had a good laugh about it.”

“So he went to the freezer and started unwrapping the body, and—”

“Actually,” Becker interrupted, “he started unwrapping the head.”

Various guttural exclamations of disgust around the room were followed by a silence.

“You gentlemen still there?” There was a touch of amusement in Becker’s voice.

“We’re here,” said Rodriguez coldly. There was another silence.

“You gentlemen have any more questions, or does that pretty much wrap up your missing-person case?”

“I have a question,” said Gurney. “How’d you make the positive ID?”

“We got a DNA near hit on the sex-offender segment of the NCIC database.”

“Meaning a close family member?”

“Yep. Turned out to be Melanie’s biological heroin-addict father, Damian Clark, who’d been convicted of rape, aggravated sexual assault, sexual abuse of a minor, and several other unpleasant offenses about ten years ago. We tracked down the mother, who had divorced her rapist husband and remarried a man by the name of Roger Strum. She came down and ID’d the body. We also took a DNA sample from her and got a first-degree family confirmation like we did with the biological father. So there’s no doubt about the identity of the murdered girl. Any other questions?”

“You have any doubt about the identity of the murderer?” asked Gurney.

“Not a lot. There’s just something about Mr. Ballston.”

“The Strums seem pretty upset that he’s out on bail.”

“Not as upset as I am.”

“He managed to convince the judge he’s not a flight risk?”

“What he managed to do was post a ten-million-dollar bail bond and agree to what amounts to house arrest. He has to remain within the confines of his estate here in Palm Beach.”

“You don’t sound happy with that.”

“Happy? Did I mention that the ME concluded that before she was decapitated, Melanie Strum had been forcibly raped maybe a dozen times and that virtually every inch of her body had been lacerated with a razor blade? Am I happy that the man who did that is sitting next to his million-dollar swimming pool in his five-hundred-dollar designer sunglasses while the most expensive law firm in the state of Florida and the fanciest public-relations outfit in New York City are doing everything possible to position him as the innocent victim of an incompetent and corrupt police department? Are you asking me if I’m happy about that?”

“So it would be an understatement to say he’s not cooperating with the investigation?”

“Yes, sir. Yes indeed. That would be an understatement. Mr. Ballston’s attorneys have made it clear that their client will not say one word to anyone in law enforcement about the bogus case fabricated against him.”

“Before he decided to say nothing, did he offer any explanation for the presence of a murdered woman in his freezer?”

“Only that he has had frequent work done on his home, has had many household employees, and Lord only knows how many people might have had access to his basement—not to mention the burglar himself.”

Kline looked around the room, his hands palms up in a questioning gesture, but no one had anything to add. “Okay,” he said. “Detective Becker, I want to thank you for your help. And for your candor. And good luck with your case.”

There was a pause. Then the soft drawl. “Just wondering … if you gentlemen might know anything about this case up there on your end that could be useful to us down here?”

Kline and Rodriguez looked at each other. Gurney could see the wheels turning as they weighed the potential risks and rewards of openness. The captain finally offered a glum little shrug, deferring the decision to the DA.

“Well,” said Kline, making it all sound iffier than it really was, “we think it’s possible we may be looking for more than one mis-per.”

“Oh?” There was a silence, suggesting that Becker was either taking time to absorb this or wondering why it hadn’t been mentioned sooner. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its softness. “Exactly how many are we talking about?”

O
n the long drive home, Gurney was obsessed by the situation in Palm Beach, by the image of Jordan Ballston beside his pool, by the desire to get to the man and get to the bottom of this bizarre case. But getting to the man would not be easy. Having insulated himself behind a wall of legal and PR spokespeople, Ballston sure as hell was not about to sit down for a friendly chat about the body in his basement.

Just outside the little village of Musgrave, Gurney pulled in to a Stewart’s convenience store for coffee. It was close to 3:00
P.M.
, and he was on the verge of caffeine withdrawal.

As he was getting back into his car with a steaming sixteen-ounce container, his phone was ringing.

It was Hardwick. “So what do you think, Davey? Whole new ball game?”

“Same game. New camera angle.”

“You see something you didn’t see before?”

“An opportunity. Just not sure how to get at it.”

“Ballston? You think he’s going to tell you anything? Good luck!”

“Only key we’ve got, Jack. Got to find a way to turn it.”

“You think he’s somehow behind this whole thing?”

“I don’t know enough yet to think anything. I can’t imagine any way he could have killed Jillian Perry. But I’ll say it again—he’s the only key we’ve got. He’s got a real name, a real business and personal background, and his ass is planted at a real address. Compared to him, Hector Flores is a ghost.”

“Okay, ace, you let us know when that genius brain of yours
figures out how to turn the key. But that’s not why I called. Some more stuff on Karnala and its owners just drifted in.”

“Kline told me you discovered it wasn’t really a clothing company?”