After a less-than-relaxed dinner during which neither she nor Gurney said much, Madeleine began doing the dishes—a task she always insisted was hers.
Gurney went over and sat quietly on a stool at the sink island. He knew if he waited long enough, she’d get around to saying what was on her mind.
When the washed dishes had all been placed in the drainer, she picked up a towel to dry them. “I assume that was the Spalter murder investigator?”
“Yes. Mick Klemper.”
“A very angry man.”
Whenever Madeleine stated the obvious, he knew that something less obvious was being implied. In this instance it wasn’t clear to him what that something was, but he did feel the need to offer some sort of explanation for what she’d apparently overheard.
“It must have been a difficult day for him.”
“Difficult?”
He elaborated. “Once the Bincher accusations started shooting around the Internet, a lot of people would have been calling Klemper for clarification. BCI brass, State Police Legal Department, DA’s office, Internal Affairs, attorney general’s office—not to mention the media vultures.”
She was holding a plate in her hand, frowning. “I find it hard to understand.”
“It’s simple enough. After talking to Kay Spalter, Klemper decided she was guilty. The question is, how sick was that decision?”
“I mean, how much of it was based on Kay reminding him of his ex-wife? Also, how many laws did he break to make sure she got convicted?”
She was still holding the plate. “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the level of rage I saw down at the barn, how close to the edge he was, how—”
“I’m pretty sure that was all coming out of fear. Fear that the evil Kay will go free, fear that his view of the case is about to be smashed, fear of losing his job, fear of going to jail. The fear of disintegrating, falling apart, losing his grasp of who he is. The fear of becoming nobody.”
“So you’re saying he’s desperate.”
“Absolutely desperate.”
“Desperate. Disintegrating.”
“Yes.”
“Were you carrying your gun?”
For a moment the question baffled him. “No. Of course not.”
“You were face-to-face with a furious lunatic—a desperate, disintegrating individual. But of course you weren’t carrying your gun?” She had a look of pain in her eyes. Pain and fear. “Now do you understand why I want you to see Malcolm Claret?”
He was about to say something about not knowing that Klemper would be waiting for him, that he’d never liked carrying a gun, and that he generally didn’t do so unless he was facing some known threat—but he realized that she was talking about something deeper and broader than this one incident, and for that larger subject at that moment he had no appetite.
After drying the same plate absently for another minute, she left the room and headed up the hall stairs. A minute later, he heard the initial bars of an unpleasantly jagged cello piece.
He’d avoided discussing the issue implicit in her question about Malcolm Claret, but now he couldn’t help picturing the man himself—the cerebral gaze, the thinning hair over a high, pale forehead, the gestures as economical as his speech, the colorless slacks and loose cardigan, the stillness, the unassuming manner.
Gurney realized he was picturing the man as he appeared many years ago. He altered the image in his mind as a computer aging program might—deepening wrinkles, subtracting hair, adding the wearying effects of time and gravity on facial flesh. Uncomfortable with the result, he put it out of his mind.
He thought instead about Klemper—about his obsessive negative focus on Kay Spalter, his certainty regarding her guilt, his willingness to subvert the investigation to produce the desired conclusion as quickly as possible.
The approach was disconcerting—not because it was completely divorced from normal procedure, but because it wasn’t. Klemper’s offense seemed to Gurney not a matter of kind but of degree. The notion that a good detective always proceeds via pure logic and an open mind to objective conclusions concerning the nature of the crime and the identity of the perpetrator is at best a pleasant fantasy. In the real world of crime and punishment—as in all human endeavors—objectivity is an illusion. Survival itself demands that we leap to conclusions. Crucial action is always based on partial evidence. The hunter who demands a zoologist’s affidavit that the deer in his sights is truly a deer will soon starve. The jungle dweller who counts all the tiger’s stripes before deciding to retreat will be killed and eaten. The genes that urge certainty tend not to be passed into the next generation.
In the real world, we must connect the few dots we have and guess at a pattern that makes workable sense. It’s an imperfect system. So is life itself. The danger arises not so much from the scarcity of dots as from the unconscious personal agenda that prioritizes certain dots over others, an agenda that wants the pattern to look a certain way. Our perceptions of events are warped more by the power of our emotions than by the weakness of our data.
In this light, the situation was simple. Klemper wanted Kay to be guilty and therefore came to believe that she was. Dots that didn’t fit the pattern were devalued or ignored. Rules that impeded a “righteous” ending were similarly devalued or ignored.
But there was another way of looking at it.
Since the process of moving to a conclusion on the basis of incomplete data was natural and necessary, the common warning against doing so really amounted to no more than a warning not to leap to the wrong conclusion. The truth was that any conclusion might be premature. The final verdict on the validity of the leap would be rendered by the validity of the result.
That thought raised a disquieting possibility.
Suppose Klemper’s conclusion was correct.
Suppose the hate-filled Klemper had arrived at the truth. Suppose his sloppy procedures and possible felonies constituted a rotten route to the right end. Suppose Kay Spalter was, in fact, guilty of murdering her husband. Gurney had no great appetite for helping to free a stone-cold killer, no matter how deeply flawed her trial may have been.
And there was yet another possibility. Suppose Klemper’s hell-bent determination to have Kay put away had nothing to do with limited perceptions or faulty conclusions. Suppose it was a cynical and corrupt effort, bought and paid for by a third party who wanted the case closed as quickly as possible.
Suppose, suppose, suppose. Gurney was finding the echo irritating and unproductive—and the need for more facts compelling.
The dissonant chords of Madeleine’s cello piece were growing louder.