“But then, on the way out, the assailant dropped what you believe is the murder weapon. Then got attacked by the dog.”
“And killed it.”
“What kind of dog was it?”
“German shepherd. Big male. Even dead it looked scary.”
“They let it out at night?”
“So the housekeeper told us. They had one of those invisible electric dog fences, enclosing about six acres around the house.”
“Do you know where the dog was killed?”
“I assume where we found it. At the edge of the woods, not far from the conservatory.”
“Why do you assume that’s where it was killed?”
Slovak blinked in confusion and ran his hand back over his stubbly hair, as if to aerate a sweating scalp. “Why kill it and move it? That dog weighed over a hundred pounds. You think it matters?”
“It might.”
“I’ll see what we can do to pin it down.”
“Probably a good idea,” said Gurney. “But you’re the CIO on this. You run the case any way you want. It’s your turf, Brad. I’m just an observer, asking questions.”
Slovak gave him a knowing look. “You’re not just any observer.”
“Meaning?”
“When Chief Morgan told us you were coming, I did some research. I found an article in New York magazine from six years ago. Titled ‘Supercop.’”
“Jesus,” muttered Gurney.
“The article said you had the highest percentage of cleared homicide cases in the history of the NYPD, and that you’d worked hundreds of homicides. Hundreds. You know how many I’ve worked? Two—both when I was on loan to the Bastenburg department—and they were both domestics. I also found newspaper articles about cases you solved since you moved upstate—the White River murders and those killings up in Wolf Lake. So, any advice you have for me, I’m ready to listen.”
Gurney’s allergy to flattery led to an awkward silence.
He noted that Slovak was still holding his phone, which he’d taken out when he offered to show Gurney the photos he’d taken of the scene. It seemed like a good path back to the reality of the moment.
Gurney pointed to it. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Slovak tapped an icon, bringing up a series of photos that showed Russell’s body tilted down over the chair in the grotesque face-on-the-floor, legs-in-the-air position Morgan had described. But seeing the body on the phone screen, stripped of every iota of dignity, was different from just hearing about it.
“These are the ones I took,” said Slovak. “Our photographer took a lot more, different angles, plus a video. I can get those for you if you—” He was interrupted by the ringtone of the phone. He took the call. It lasted less than a minute.
“That was Chief Morgan. He wants me to interview the three gardeners, find out if they saw anything, et cetera. Freddy Martinez, our only Spanish-speaking officer, can translate. You can stay up here and get a closer look at things. Chief said he’d join you in a few minutes.”
When Slovak had departed, Gurney’s attention returned to the bloodstained area in front of the bathroom door, but now he was visualizing the revolting images he’d seen on Slovak’s phone.
Over the course of his career, he’d come to accept these disturbing experiences as a natural part of dealing with violent deaths. But being horrified, disgusted, or touched by the details of a brutal crime didn’t help in solving it. For some detectives, those emotions did seem to provide extra motivation, a willingness to go the extra mile. Gurney had never lacked motivation. But his personal motivation to get to the bottom of things—to expose the lies and find the truth—had little to do with empathy for the victim. It came from a colder place in his psyche. It arose from his desire to know.
He could picture himself trying to explain this to Madeleine. And he could imagine her asking, with a skeptical tilt of her head, what had compelled him that morning to get into his car and drive to Larchfield. “Didn’t it have something to do with your feelings about the way Mike Morgan was treated by his father? And your feelings about being alive because of what he did in that South Bronx hallway?”
He could picture himself replying that although his feelings had influenced his decision to be present that morning, they wouldn’t drive his pursuit of the truth. If that pursuit was to begin in earnest, it would be for another reason altogether.
He could picture Madeleine’s likely response—a patient smile.
His phone rang.
He was too logical a man to believe that coincidences were driven by unseen forces, but it gave him a tiny frisson to see Madeleine’s name on the screen.
“Just wanted to let you know,” she said, “our dinner has been moved to tomorrow evening.”
He had no idea what she was talking about.
“With the Winklers,” she added. “You might want to put a reminder on your phone.” She paused. “How are things in Larchfield?”
“Hard to say. There’s an odd—” He stopped speaking at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
A moment later, Morgan pushed aside the containment curtain and came into the room, his expression more strained than usual.
“Sorry, Maddie, got to go. Talk to you later.”
Morgan was shaking his head. “Damn! As if the situation wasn’t bad enough by itself, now I’ve got Aspern to deal with. That’s who was on the phone. Expressing his ‘concerns’ about the investigation, the media, the negative impact on the precious image of Larchfield.” His gaze rose to the ceiling, as if searching for an escape hatch.
“What’s his concern about the investigation?”
“That my department may not be up to handling it. Or, more to the point, handling it quickly enough to avoid the town’s reputation being shredded.”
“A reputation he’s heavily invested in?”
“Not just heavily. Totally. Apart from the long-term Harrow Hill lease he inherited from his father, he’s acquired most of the old farms in the immediate area—which he’s been subdividing into ten-acre parcels and advertising as ‘Serene Country Estates Nestled Around a Picture-Book Village.’ Larchfield’s most prominent resident getting his throat sliced open in the middle of the night is not the picture Aspern is trying to promote.”
Gurney glanced toward the gruesome stain on the floor. “Inconvenient facts are still facts. What does he expect you to do?”
“God only knows. Identify the killer this afternoon? Arrest him tonight? Use my magic powers to keep the story out of the news?”
“If Aspern is concerned about your department, why don’t you just turn the case over to the state police? That’s what their Bureau of Criminal Investigation is there for.”
Morgan began pacing around the room, uttering little sounds of misery and indecision. Finally, he stopped and shook his head. “I can’t do that. It would be giving up too soon.” There was something pleading in his tone. “If we could manage it ourselves, that would be ideal. If we can’t, we can’t. But to give up before we’ve hardly gotten started . . .” He shook his head in a way that resembled a shiver.
“Small-town departments ‘give up’ all the time,” said Gurney. “They deal with drug arrests, burglaries, assaults—you know the drill—and hand homicides over to BCI. Simple matter of resources.”
“We have resources. We have an arrangement with the college’s forensic sciences department that gives us access to their state-of-the-art lab. We can get results here faster than BCI can get them from their lab in Albany. Admittedly, our people don’t have much major crime experience—except for Kyra Barstow—but they’re not stupid. They just need some direction.”