Action being the best antidote for anxiety, and information the only remedy for uncertainty, when they parted that afternoon, each had an assignment—along with a sense of urgency arising from the growing hazards and peculiarities of the case.
Esti would press her various contacts for OCTF data on Gurikos, NCIC data on the key players in the case, and MO data from ViCAP that might match elements of the murder scenes.
Gurney would have a frank discussion with Mick Klemper about his diminishing options, then try to set up a meeting with Jonah Spalter.
Hardwick would pay a visit to Lex Bincher’s home in Cooperstown, track down the trial witnesses, and prod his pal at Interpol for anything on Gurikos and/or the Gurikos murder MO.
Like many cops, Mick Klemper had two cell phones, one personal and one job-related. Esti had both numbers from the time she’d worked closely, and miserably, with him. Before the meeting broke up, she gave both to Gurney.
Now, half an hour later, sitting at the desk in his den, he called the personal one.
Klemper picked up on the third ring, but evidently not before seeing Gurney’s ID.
“How the hell did you get this private number?”
Gurney smiled, pleased at getting the reaction he’d expected. “Hello, Mick.”
“I said, how the hell did you get this number?”
“It’s all over the billboards on the Thruway.”
“What?”
“There’s just no privacy anymore, Mick. You ought to know that. Numbers get around.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“There’s so much information floating around. Information overload. That’s what they call it, right?”
“What? What the fuck is this?”
“I’m just thinking out loud. Thinking what a treacherous world we live in. A man might think he’s engaging in a private activity, and next day on the Internet there’s a video of him taking a crap.”
“Yeah? You know what? That’s disgusting. Disgusting! What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
“So talk.”
“Face-to-face would be better. No intervening technology. Technology can be a problem. A violator of privacy.”
Klemper hesitated—long enough to indicate a significant level of concern. “I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Gurney figured this was a cover-your-ass statement in the event the call was being taped, rather than pure thickheadedness. “What I’m talking about is that we should talk about some issues of mutual concern.”
“Fine. Whatever the fuck that means. Let’s get this bullshit over with. Where do you want to talk?”
“Up to you.”
“I couldn’t care less.”
“How about Riverside Mall?”
Klemper hesitated again, longer this time. “Riverside? When?”
“Sooner the better. Things are happening.”
“Where in the mall?”
“Main concourse? Lots of benches there. Usually empty.”
Another hesitation. “When?”
Gurney knew from Esti that Klemper got off his shift at five. He checked the time on his cell screen—4:01 p.m. “How about five-thirty?”
“Today?”
“Definitely today. Tomorrow might be too late.”
A final pause. “All right. Riverside. Five-thirty, sharp. You better make more sense there than you’re making here. Because right now? Right now, this sounds like a pile of shit.” He disconnected the call.
Gurney found the man’s bravado encouraging. It sounded like fear.
Riverside Mall was a forty-minute drive from Walnut Crossing, giving Gurney about fifty minutes before he had to set out. It didn’t allow him much time to prepare for a meeting that had the potential to give the investigation a dramatic shove in the right direction, if it was handled right. He got a yellow lined pad out of his desk drawer to help organize his thoughts.
He found it surprisingly difficult. His mind was unsettled, moving from one unresolved issue to another. The unreachability of Lex Bincher. The similar unreachability of the three key witnesses. The shots in the night eliminating Hardwick’s lights and phone. The grotesque mutilation of Fat Gus—a warning that the killer’s secret must be kept. But what secret? Was it his or her identity? Or something else?
And, of course, there was the central conundrum of the case from the beginning, the puzzle piece that Gurney felt would eventually make sense of all the others—the contradictory site of the shooting. On the one hand, there was the apartment with the silenced, tripod-fitted rifle and the fresh gunpowder residue with a chemical profile that linked it to a .220 Swift cartridge and the bullet fragments extracted from Carl Spalter’s brain. On the other hand, there was the light pole that made the shot impossible.
It was possible that the killer used a different apartment in that building to make the shot and then transferred the weapon to the apartment where it was found, firing a second shot from that location to produce the powder residue. But that scenario was simpler in the saying than it would have been in the doing. It also involved a much-elevated risk of detection, requiring the shooter to carry the cumbersome combination of rifle, tripod, and suppressor through the public spaces of the building. And why bother? There were, after all, several unoccupied apartments from which the shot could have been fired successfully. So why move the weapon at all? Surely not to create an intellectual puzzle. Murderers are rarely that playful. And professional hitters never are.
That thought brought him full circle to the more immediate matter of Klemper. Was Mick the Dick the thuggish, horny clown that his nickname and general manner seemed to suggest? Or might the man be a darker, colder operator altogether?
Gurney hoped their meeting in the mall would provide some answers.
He needed to focus now on the broadest range of possibilities, think them through—angles, objectives. He straightened the yellow pad on his desk and picked up his pen. He tried to force his thoughts into a logical structure by drawing a branching diagram, beginning with four possibilities.
One posited Alyssa as the prime mover behind Carl’s murder and Kay’s conviction.
The second substituted Jonah Spalter for Alyssa.
The third posited an Unknown as Carl’s murderer, with Alyssa and Klemper as opportunistic conspirators in Kay’s conviction.
The fourth posited Kay as guilty.
He added a second level of branching possibilities under each of these.
“Hello?”
Gurney blinked.
“Hello?” It was Madeleine’s voice calling from the opposite side of the house. From the mudroom, it sounded like.
Bringing his pad and pen with him, he went out to the kitchen. “I’m here.”
She was just coming in from the side-door hallway, carrying two plastic supermarket bags. “I left the trunk open. Maybe you could bring in the cracked corn?”
“The what?”
“I read that chickens love cracked corn.”
He sighed, then tried to regard this in the positive light of a momentary diversion from his darker duties. “Bring it in and put it where?”
“The mudroom would be fine.”
He went out to Madeleine’s car, hefted the fifty-pound bag out of the trunk, struggled for a few seconds with the side door of the house, came in, and dropped the bag in the nearest corner of the mudroom—the positive light fading quickly to a weak flicker.
“You bought a lifetime supply?” he asked when he returned to the kitchen.
“It’s the only size they had. Sorry about that. Are you okay?”
“Fine. I guess I’m a little preoccupied—getting ready to go and meet with someone.”
“Oh—that reminds me—before I forget …” Her tone was pleasantly even. “You have an appointment tomorrow morning with Malcolm.”
“Malcolm Claret?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I called him before I left the clinic. He said he’d just gotten a cancellation and had an opening tomorrow at eleven.”
“No … What I don’t understand is why.”
“Because I’m afraid for you. We’ve discussed that.”
“No, I mean why you made the appointment for me.”
“Because you hadn’t made it yet, and it’s important.”
“So … you just … decided it was up to you?”
“It had to be up to somebody.”
He turned his palms up in a pose of bewilderment. “I don’t quite get that.”
“What is there to get?”
“I wouldn’t make an appointment for you—not unless you asked me to.”
“Even if you thought it might save my life?”
He hesitated. “Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?”
She met his gaze and answered softly. “No, I don’t.”
His voice was suddenly filled with exasperation. “You honestly believe an appointment with Malcolm Claret is going to save my life?”
Just as suddenly, her voice was filled with a weary sadness. “If you really don’t want to see him, just cancel the appointment.”
If she’d said that in any other tone, he could imagine himself launching into a grand debate over whose responsibility it was to cancel an appointment she had made, and then he might even segue to the lumber pile she’d ordered for the chicken-house project and how she had a way of starting things that he had to finish and how things always had to happen on her schedule.
But the emotion in her eyes short-circuited all of that.
Besides, it was beginning to dawn on him, strangely, that there might not be any harm in seeing Claret after all.
He was saved from going on with the discussion, however, by the ringing of the phone in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked the ID. “Kyle Gurney” was displayed for a second before the signal was lost. He was tempted to call him back, but figured his son was likely on the move somewhere, passing through a dead spot, and it would make more sense to wait a while.
He checked the clock. It was later than he’d guessed—4:44 p.m.
It was time to leave for the mall. For the crucial meeting for which he hadn’t yet managed to prepare.