If the barn incident was a deliberate attempt to cast suspicion on Aspern, a question remained concerning its motivation. Was Aspern an innocent man being framed for the Larchfield murders? Or was someone who knew Aspern was guilty trying to bring him to the attention of law enforcement?
Gurney saw problems with both interpretations. If Aspern were guilty, why had the unknown individual chosen such an elaborate approach, when he or she could have accomplished the same thing with an anonymous call or text that spelled out whatever incriminating information they had? But if Aspern were innocent, how could one explain his bizarre attempt on Lorinda Russell’s life?
Gurney made himself an extra-strong mug of coffee, opened the French doors to let in the cool morning air, and settled down at the breakfast table to wrestle with the possibilities. Once again he was interrupted by the ringing of his phone.
The number on the screen was faintly familiar.
“Detective?”
“Yes?”
“I remembered his name.”
“Sorry, who is this?”
“Clarice. Clarice Flacco. You said to call if I remembered anything else. It was Otis. The one with the motorcycle. His name was Otis.”
“He told you that?”
“No, that’s why I didn’t remember. He didn’t tell me his name. It was tattooed on the knuckles of his right hand, one letter on each knuckle. I didn’t see it at first because he was wearing gloves. When he was about to leave, he took out his wallet to pay for Mr. Bullock’s back rent. Did I tell you about that?”
“You did.”
“Anyway,” said Clarice, “he took off his gloves, to get the money out of his wallet. That’s when I saw the name. Otis.”
“Did you happen to see the knuckles of his other hand?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, Clarice, that’s very helpful. By the way, did anyone ever call or come to see you about Mr. Bullock’s possessions? Whatever was left in the apartment?”
“He didn’t have hardly anything.” There was a defensiveness in her tone now. “No personal items, credit cards, checks, phone. Definitely no cash. The cousin must have took all that. I don’t know if Mr. Bullock ever had a computer. I forget what happened about the clothes and furniture. We probably gave whatever there was to the Salvation Army.”
Gurney had his doubts about that, but saw no point in pursuing it. He thanked her for getting in touch with him and encouraged her to call again if new memories surfaced.
Then he called Hardwick and left a message:
“Regarding the Crickton thing, the big guy’s name was Otis. As in Otis Strane. As far as I’m concerned, that seals the deal on Gant-Patriarch involvement in Bullock’s death. The question is, what might that have to do with the present situation? Maybe nothing, right? On the other hand, maybe everything. Let’s talk.”
Next, he called Slovak.
As usual, he picked up immediately. “Yes, sir?”
“Morning, Brad. I wanted to follow up with you on a few loose ends. That call you told me you got from the liquor store owner, about Aspern buying a three-hundred-dollar bottle of wine. Did you ever find the bottle?”
“No, sir. Like I told you, once the DA gave the word to close the case, Chief Morgan shut everything down.”
“So, the bottle of wine might still be in Aspern’s house?”
“I guess, but . . .”
“I know the chief doesn’t want to allocate resources to a cleared case, but this wouldn’t fall in that category. No expenditures involved, and hardly any time—just a final check of the victim’s residence. I bet you and a couple of your people could handle it in less than an hour. A bottle of wine shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”
“Yeah, I guess. Okay. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
“Have you heard from the chief this morning?”
“No, sir. I left a message, but he hasn’t gotten back to me.”
“And there’s no command structure between you and him, is that right?”
“Right. We’ve always been a small department, pretty informal, with the sergeants reporting directly to the chief. We never had layers of lieutenants and captains. I guess that’s good and bad.”
“Okay, Brad, let me know how the wine search turns out. And keep an eye open for Aspern’s missing phone.”
“Yes, sir.”
Next, Gurney turned his attention to the question he’d raised with Hardwick. If someone wanted Aspern to appear responsible for the message on the barn and, by extension, for the Larchfield murders . . . were they trying to frame an innocent man or focus attention on a guilty one?
Neither possibility made much sense. He couldn’t recall a single instance of anyone engaging in an act of criminal mischief in order to draw law enforcement attention to a real evildoer. On the other hand, Aspern’s attack on Lorinda made it difficult to view him as the innocent victim of a frame job.
Gurney concluded that he was missing something—something that could be the key to a completely different understanding of the murders. And that brought back the feeling he might have overlooked something crucial in the videos. He decided to make his way through them one final time. He opened his laptop and began the familiar process.
The video of Tate on the roof of St. Giles yielded no new information. It just reinforced the impression Gurney had of Tate’s recklessness. There were no “Aha!” moments in the mortuary video, either. His attention was drawn mainly to the splintering sound of the casket bursting open. The sound conjured an image of a gasping, wild-eyed Billy Tate—panic and confusion mixed with a surge of relief at breaking out of a confinement he could not at that moment have understood.
He recalled that Dr. Vickerz’s analysis of the torn wood fibers around the latch had focused on the direction from which the force had been applied to break open the casket lid, not on how much force had been required. In a practical sense it might not matter. Whatever the amount of force, it had been sufficient, and Tate was reputed to have been unusually strong. Still, it remained an unknown, and Gurney was hungry for facts.
He didn’t have a number for Vickerz, so he called Barstow and left a message asking that Vickerz perform an additional experiment to determine how much upward force would have been needed against the inside of the casket lid to tear the wood apart from the metal latch. He was hoping that Barstow would pass the request along without challenging the appropriateness of conducting another test in the context of a closed case, and that Vickerz’s scientific curiosity would carry the ball from there.
Going through the rest of the videos, he saw nothing he hadn’t seen before. He was still made uneasy by the fact that Aspern was carrying the mallet in his right hand as he approached the conservatory, and even more uneasy by the discrepancy between the size of the shoelace bows in that video of Aspern’s approach and their size in the post-shooting photos of his body.
These oddities brought to mind a digital video issue frequently in the news—deepfake manipulation. Although that technology appeared to have no application to these videos, other forms of manipulation were possible.
He placed another call to Barstow. This time she picked up.
“Sorry I missed your first call. Greta’s on the job. She’s obsessive, so you’re sure to get a precise answer. Obsession can be a good thing, don’t you think?”
“It depends.”
“I agree. Anything else?”
“Can your computer lab test the integrity of video files?”
“There are some basic diagnostics. You have a worry?”
“With all the digital fakery going on these days, it seems worth checking. I’m talking about the videos that were shown in the meeting with Cam Stryker.”
“I’ll call you as soon as we have something.”