“Why?”
“Because the land has quadrupled in value since the terms were negotiated.”
“How much money is involved?”
“It’s conceivable that Aspern could sell the lease to his half of Harrow Hill, with development rights, for somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty million dollars. If Russell could have gotten the lease invalidated, those development rights would have reverted to him. But there was a larger issue than the money. It was about control. Russell was always fiercely determined to get his own way. On top of that, he despised Aspern. And the feeling was mutual.”
“Why did he lease him the land to begin with?”
“He didn’t. The deal was worked out years ago between their fathers, who were business partners, and both of whom died soon after the deal was finalized.”
“So, your victim had at least one serious enemy.”
Morgan burst out in a nervous laugh. “Be nice if it was only one. Control freaks like Angus Russell collect enemies by the dozen.”
“I assume there’s a will. What do you know about his beneficiaries?”
“Best guess is that everything will be funneled through private trusts and there won’t be any significant assets to go through public probate. Maybe none at all. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the bulk of his wealth going to his wife and his sister.”
“He had no children?”
“No.”
“Charities?”
“He considered them all frauds.”
“How about close friends? Local institutions?”
“I don’t think he had any friends. As for institutions, one possibility would be his sister’s church. Hilda Russell is the Episcopal pastor of St. Giles—the church on the square with the white spire. And there’s Russell College, endowed by Angus’s grandfather. It overlooks the lake.”
“Is that where you were head of security?”
“Yes.”
“Angus hired you for that job?”
“Yes.”
“Then hired you again as village police chief?”
“Yes.”
“He was empowered to do that?”
“Officially, I was appointed by the village board.”
“But Angus unofficially controlled the board?”
“Angus unofficially controlled a lot of things. Some key people owed him a lot—money, favors, his willingness to keep secret the embarrassing facts he’d discovered about them, et cetera. He had enormous power, and he enjoyed using it.”
“How do you think his death will affect your position?”
Morgan’s jaw muscles tightened visibly, as did his hands on the steering wheel. He started to speak, stopped, then began again. “A lot will depend on how this case turns out . . . how smoothly it’s managed . . . how clear the outcome is.”
“How do you see Aspern in that process?”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“Do you see him as a friend or an enemy?”
“Definitely not as a friend. That’s not how he relates to people. He sees everything in terms of transactional allies and enemies—what people can do for him or to him.”
Gurney nodded, trying to organize everything Morgan had told him. But he realized it was way too soon to start pigeonholing information, with so much more to be learned, and he turned his attention to the area they were driving through.
Waterview Drive followed the outline of the lake, which Gurney estimated to be about two miles long and half a mile wide. The homes along it were set on large verdant lots that ran from the shoulder of the road down to the edge of the lake. The properties were separated from each other by lush plantings of laurel and rhododendrons. The homes were mostly big traditional colonials—painted in a muted palette of olives, grays, tans, and deep reddish-browns that reminded him of dried blood.
The cars were as conspicuously upmarket as the real estate. He turned to Morgan, who was chewing obsessively on his lip.
“What sort of people live in Larchfield?”
“Their common denominators are wealth, entitlement, and the willingness to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a house in order to live next to someone else who was willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a house. As usual, the ones who consider themselves the cream of the crop tend to be the scum of the earth.”
Gurney was surprised by the bitterness. “Sounds like you hate living here.”
“Carol and I don’t live here. There’s no way we could afford it, even when she was working. We’re out in the wilderness between here and Bastenburg. Land is cheaper in the middle of nowhere.”
The poor-me attitude was familiar to Gurney from their days in the NYPD. It was getting on his nerves all over again. A mile or so later, with the shimmering blue lake on their left and a dense forested rise on their right, Morgan slowed and turned up into the woods on a dirt-and-gravel lane marked PRIVATE ROAD.
“This is the foot of Harrow Hill—the Russell side of it.”
Gurney peered ahead to where the lane began to climb more steeply through the dark woods. The gloomy greens of ragged hemlocks and ledges of flinty black rock set the hillside far apart from the nearby picture-book world of Waterview Drive.
“Seems a rather cheerless approach for a grand estate,” said Gurney.
Morgan flashed a humorless smile. “Cheerfulness has never been a Russell virtue.”
After ascending through a sequence of sunless switchbacks, they arrived at a gateway in a high stone wall. The ornamental iron gate was open, but a length of yellow police tape was taking its place. Beyond the tape there was a long allée of tall beech trees arching over a beige gravel driveway. Gurney could see, centered at the end of the driveway, the portico of a massive, rectangular stone building. He couldn’t help feeling there was something cold, almost inhuman, in the perfect geometry of it all.
A young officer with a Larchfield PD badge on his sleeve appeared from nowhere with a clipboard, eyeing Gurney through the windshield. Morgan lowered his side window.
“Morning, Scotty.”
“Morning, sir. If you don’t mind, sir, for the crime-scene log, I’ll need the name of your passenger.”
Morgan spelled it out. The officer entered it on his clipboard, lowered the yellow tape, and waved them through.
The arrow-straight driveway split at the end into two matching arcs that met under the portico. A smaller driveway led from the far side of the portico to a six-bay carriage house with a slate roof. Morgan parked in front of the main house behind six other police vehicles: four black-and-white cruisers, an unmarked Dodge Charger, and a gray tech van. Wide cream-colored stone steps led to an entrance door of polished mahogany.
“Quite the palace, eh?” said Morgan. “Built with Cotswold stone that Angus’s grandfather had shipped over from England.”
Gurney noted Morgan’s alternating awe and contempt in the face of Larchfield wealth, but responded only with a noncommittal grunt.
Morgan opened his door. “Where do you want to start? Inside the house or outside?”
“First, I need to understand the personnel situation—who’s on-site, what their responsibilities are.”
“The two main people you’ll meet are Brad Slovak and Kyra Barstow. Brad’s a detective, acting as case CIO and scene coordinator. Kyra’s our main evidence tech and an instructor in the forensic sciences program at the college. We have four patrol officers on-site to assist Brad and Kyra.”
“The medical examiner was here yesterday?”
“Dr. Ronald Fallow. Lives locally, so he got here quickly. He examined the body in situ, transported it to his office in Clarksburg, and scheduled the autopsy for this morning. We might get preliminary findings by the end of the day. Or we might not. Fallow’s not easy to deal with.”