Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel (52 page)

“I’ve made a decision,” he said.

She gave him a look that told him she knew what he was about to say.

“I’m backing out of the case.”

She folded the towel and hung it over the edge of the dish drainer. “Why?”

“Because of everything that’s happened.”

She studied him for a few seconds, turned, and looked thoughtfully out the window nearest the sink.

“I left a message for Val Perry,” he said.

She turned back toward him. Her Mona Lisa smile came and went like a flicker of light. “It’s a beautiful day,” she said. “Do you want to come for a little walk?”

“Sure.” Normally he would have resisted the suggestion or, at best, accompanied her reluctantly, but at that moment he had no resistance in him.

It had turned into one of those soft September days when the temperature outside was the same as inside, and the only difference he sensed as they stepped out onto the little side porch was the leafy smell of the autumn air. The trooper sitting in his cruiser by the
asparagus patch lowered his window and looked questioningly at them.

“Just stretching our legs,” said Gurney. “We’ll stay in sight.”

The young man nodded.

They followed the swath they kept mowed along the edge of the woods to prevent saplings from encroaching on the field. They circled slowly down to the bench by the pond, where they sat in silence.

It was quiet around the pond in September—unlike May and June, when the croaking frogs and screeching blackbirds maintained a constant territorial ruckus.

Madeleine took his hand in hers.

He lost track of time, a casualty of emotion.

At some point Madeleine said softly, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“My expectation … that everything should always be exactly the way I want it.”

“Maybe that’s the way everything should be. Maybe the way you want things is right.”

“I’d like to think so. But … I doubt that it’s true. And I don’t think you should give up the job you agreed to do.”

“I’ve already made up my mind.”

“Then you should change your mind.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a detective, and I have no right to demand that you should magically turn into something else.”

“I don’t know much about magic, but you have every right in the world to ask me to see things another way. And God knows I have no right at all to put anything ahead of your safety and happiness. Sometimes … I look at things I’ve done … situations I’ve created … dangers I didn’t pay enough attention to—and I think I must be insane.”

“Maybe sometimes,” she said. “Maybe just a little.” She looked out over the pond with a sad smile and squeezed his hand. The air was perfectly still. Even the tops of the tall cattail rushes were as motionless as a photograph. She closed her eyes, but the expression on her face grew more poignant. “I shouldn’t have attacked you the
way I did, shouldn’t have said what I did, shouldn’t have called you a bastard. That’s the last thing on earth anyone should ever call you.” She opened her eyes and looked directly at him. “You’re a good man, David Gurney. An honest man. A brilliant man. An amazingly talented man. Maybe the best detective in the whole world.”

A nervous laugh burst from his throat. “God save us all!”

“I’m serious. Maybe the best detective in the whole world. So how can I tell you to stop being that, to be something else? It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

He looked out over the glassy pond at the upside-down reflections of the maples that grew on the far side. “I don’t see it in those terms.”

She ignored his response. “So here’s what you should do. You agreed to take on the Perry case for two weeks. Today is Wednesday. Your two weeks will be up this Saturday. Just three more days. Finish the job.”

“There’s no need for me to do that.”

“I know. I know you’re willing to give it up. Which is exactly what makes it all right not to.”

“Say that again?”

She laughed, ignoring his question. “Where would they be without you?”

He shook his head. “I hope you’re joking.”

“Why?”

“The last thing on earth I need is for my arrogance to be reinforced.”

“The last thing on earth you need is a wife who thinks you should be someone else.”

After a while they ambled, hand in hand, back up through the pasture, nodded pleasantly to their bodyguard, and went into the house.

Madeleine made a small cherrywood fire in the big fieldstone fireplace, opening the window next to it to keep the room from getting too warm.

For the rest of the afternoon, they did something they rarely did: nothing at all. They lounged on the couch, letting themselves be lazily hypnotized by the fire. Later Madeleine thought out loud
about possible planting changes in the garden for the following spring. Still later, perhaps to keep a flood of worries at bay, she read a chapter of
Moby-Dick
aloud to him—both pleased and perplexed by what she continued to refer to as “the most peculiar book I’ve ever read.”

She tended the fire. He showed her pictures of garden pavilions and screened gazebos in a book he’d picked up months earlier at Home Depot, and they talked about building one next summer, maybe by the pond. They dozed on and off, and the afternoon passed. They had an early supper of soup and salad while the sunset was still bright in the sky, illuminating the maples on the opposite hillside. They went to bed at dusk, made love with a kind of tenderness that grew quickly into a desperate urgency, slept for over ten hours, and awoke simultaneously at the first gray light of dawn.

G
urney had finished his scrambled eggs and toast and was about to take his plate to the sink. Madeleine looked up at him from her bowl of oatmeal and raisins and said, “I assume you’ve forgotten already where I’m going today.”

Over supper the night before, he’d persuaded her with some difficulty to spend the next couple of days with her sister in New Jersey—a prudent precaution, under the circumstances—while he wrapped up his commitment to the case. But now he wrinkled his face in concentration, making a show of bafflement. She laughed at his exaggerated expression. “Your undercover acting technique must have been a lot more persuasive than that. Or you were dealing with idiots.”

After she finished her oatmeal and had a second cup of coffee, she took a shower and got dressed. At eight-thirty she gave him a tight hug and a kiss, a worried look, then another kiss, and left for her sister’s suburban palace in Ridgewood.

When her car was well down the road, he got into his own car and followed her. Knowing the route she would take, he was able to stay far behind her, keeping her only occasionally in sight. His goal was not to follow her but to make sure no one else was following her.

After a few deserted miles, he was sure enough, and he returned home.

As he parked by the trooper’s car, they exchanged small, friendly salutes.

Before going into the house, he stood by the side door and looked around. He had for a moment a timeless feeling, the feeling of
standing in a painting. As he entered the house, the feeling of peace was disturbed by his cell phone with the short ring that signaled the arrival of a text message—and utterly shattered by the message itself:

SORRY I MISSED YOU THE OTHER DAY. I’LL TRY AGAIN. HOPE YOU ENJOY THE DOLL
.

Gurney felt an irrational impulse to charge into the woods, as though the message had been sent by someone who was at that moment lurking behind a tree trunk watching him—to shout obscenities at his invisible foe. Instead he read the message again. It included the originating number, unblocked, just like the previous messages, making it a virtual certainty that the cell phone was the untraceable prepaid variety.

It might be helpful to know the originating cell tower location, but that was a process with some sticky strings attached.

Since the intrusion of the doll into the house had been reported, it had the status of an open investigation. In that context an anonymous text message referring to the doll was a form of evidence that should be reported. However, a cell-records warrant with its ensuing data search would reveal that previous text messages had been sent to Gurney’s number from the same phone, and that he had replied to them. He felt trapped in a box of his own making, a box in which every solution would create a bigger problem.

He cursed himself for his ego-driven agreement to take on one more murder case no one else could solve; for his ego-driven willingness to let Sonya Reynolds back into his life; for his ego-driven blindness to the Jykynstyl deception; for his ego-driven desire to keep the consequences, and possible photographs, from Madeleine; for the absurd and dangerous bind in which he now found himself.

But cursing himself for his failings was getting him nowhere. He had to
do
something. But what?

The phone ringing on the kitchen sideboard answered the question for him.

It was Sheridan Kline, exuding his oiliest enthusiasm. “Dave! Glad you picked up. Get on your horse, my friend. We need you here pronto.”

“What’s happening?”

“What’s happening is that Darryl Becker of Palm Beach’s Finest found Ballston’s boat, just like you said he would. Guess what else he found.”

“I’m not a guesser.”

“Hah! Fact is, you made a damn good guess about that boat—and the possibility that the Palm Beach techs would find something on it. Well, they did. They found a tiny bloodstain … which generated a rush DNA profile … which triggered a CODIS near hit … which produced a change of heart on the part of Mr. Ballston. Or at least it produced a change in his legal strategy. He and his attorney are now in full-cooperation-to-avoid-lethal-injection mode.”

“Back up a second,” said Gurney. “The CODIS near hit—whose name popped up?”

“Worked the same way it worked with Melanie Strum—a first-degree family relationship, in this case a convicted child molester by the name of Wayne Dawker. Same last name as a Mapleshade girl, Kim Dawker, who went missing three months before Melanie. Turns out Wayne is Kim’s older brother. Ballston’s lawyers might be good enough to wiggle around one dead girl on his hands, but not two.”

“How’d they get the CODIS response so fast?”

“The phrase ‘serial murder conspiracy’ could be a motivator. Or maybe somebody in Palm Beach just happens to have the right phone number.” Kline sounded envious.

“Either way is fine with me,” said Gurney. “What’s next?”

“This afternoon Becker will be conducting a formal interrogation of Ballston, which Ballston has agreed to. We’ve been invited to participate through a computer-conferencing process. We witness the interrogation on a computer monitor and transmit any questions we want asked. I’ve insisted you be included.”

“What’s my role?”

“Submit the right question at the right time? Figure out how forthcoming he’s being? You’re the one who knows this creep best. Hey—speaking of creeps—I heard you had a little unauthorized-entry incident at your house.”

“You could call it that. Kind of unnerving at first, but … I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“Looks like someone doesn’t want you on the case—you figure that’s what it is?”

“I don’t know what else it could be.”

“Well, we can talk about it when you get here.”

“Right.” In fact, Gurney had no desire whatever to talk about it. As long as he could remember, he’d recoiled from the discussion of anything remotely connected to his own vulnerability. It was the same dysfunctional form of damage control that was keeping him from being less than forthcoming with Madeleine about his Rohypnol fears.

T
he police academy’s computer-video equipment had been updated more recently than BCI’s, so it was in the academy’s teleconferencing center that everyone gathered shortly before two that afternoon. The “center” was a conference room whose main feature was a flat-screen monitor mounted on the front wall. A semicircular table with a dozen chairs faced the screen. The attendees were all familiar to Gurney. Some, like Rebecca Holdenfield, he was happier to see than others.

He was relieved to note that they all seemed absorbed in their anticipation of what was about to occur—too absorbed to start asking about the doll and its implications.

Sergeant Robin Wigg was sitting at a small separate table in a corner of the room with two open laptops, a cell phone, and a keyboard with which she seemed to be controlling the monitor on the wall. As she tapped at the keys, the screen displayed a series of digital artifacts and numerical codes, then sprang to high-definition life—and quickly became the focus of everyone’s attention.

It showed a standard interrogation room with concrete-block walls. In the center of the room was a gray metal table. On one side of it sat Detective Darryl Becker. Facing him on the other side were two men. One looked like he’d stepped out of a
GQ
article on America’s best-dressed attorneys. The other was Jordan Ballston, in whom a devastating transformation had taken place. He looked sweaty and rumpled. His body sagged, his mouth was slightly open, and his hollow gaze was fixed on the table.

Becker turned crisply to the camera. “We’re about ready to get started. Hope we’re loud and clear at the remote location. Please confirm that.” He stared at the screen of a laptop facing him on the table.

Gurney heard Wigg tapping on her keyboard.

A few moments later, Becker smiled at his screen and gave a happy thumbs-up sign.

Rodriguez, who’d been conferring in whispers with Kline, stepped to the front of the room. “Listen up, people. We’re here to witness an interrogation, to which we’ve been invited to contribute. As the result of the discovery of new evidence on his property—”

“Bloodstains on his boat, found as the result of Gurney’s nudging,” interrupted Kline. He loved to stir the pot, keep the animosities boiling.

Rodriguez blinked and continued. “As a result of this evidence, the defendant has changed his story. In an effort to escape the certainty of the Florida death penalty, he’s offering not only to confess to the Melanie Strum murder but to provide details regarding a larger criminal conspiracy—a conspiracy that may relate to the apparent disappearances of other Mapleshade graduates. You should note that the defendant is making this statement to save his life and may be motivated to say more than he actually knows about this so-called conspiracy.”