“Thanks, Jack. I appreciate your coming.”
“Did I correctly intuit from what you said on the phone that the status of Mayor Turd-Eyes has been officially changed from villain to victim?”
“Not officially. Not yet. But I’m envisioning a whole new storyline for the case, and I wanted to get your opinion.”
“I can’t bear the fucking suspense.”
Gurney took a sip of his espresso and gathered his thoughts.
“Okay, here goes. It’s the same as the official version up to the point where Billy Tate walks out of the mortuary—but instead of taking his proposal for killing Angus to Chandler Aspern, he takes it to Lorinda Russell. She loves the idea, but she has an even better one. She calls in a hit man to kill Tate, and then kill Angus—using Tate’s fingerprints and the scalpels he stole from the mortuary to create crime-scene confusion and all the ‘walking dead’ nonsense. The hit man, wearing Tate’s clothes and driving his Jeep, also kills Mary Kane and Linda Mason, for the reasons we assumed they were killed. Then, with his help, Lorinda adds the brilliant twist of setting up Aspern for what would appear to be a self-defense killing—in order to end the police investigation of the other three murders and get rid of an aggressive legal antagonist at the same time.”
Hardwick’s acid-reflux expression was intense.
“You have a problem with this scenario?” asked Gurney.
“Too fucking clever, too fucking complicated, too many fucking spots where the train could’ve gone off the tracks.”
“You want to explain that?”
“First, tell me how you think they set up that self-defense ruse at the end.”
“Lorinda told us she called Aspern to discuss their dispute over his lease, and that the discussion ended badly. We know from the carrier’s records that she did make the call, but we have no way of verifying her version of the conversation. In fact, it may have been a lot friendlier than she claimed. She may have extended an offer he couldn’t refuse. Now that Angus is out of the picture, I’m sure we can work this out in an amicable way, et cetera. I suspect she might have emphasized the amicability angle by inviting him to have dinner with her. Aspern may have recorded the call, but his phone seems to have evaporated. Interestingly, he bought a very special bottle of wine later that afternoon, and I’m thinking it was to bring to Lorinda’s. You with this so far?”
“So far, it’s the fucking definition of hypothetical. But keep going.”
“Aspern arrives for dinner around seven o’clock. He and Lorinda have a few drinks. Maybe they open his fancy wine. At some point when he’s nice and relaxed, her hit-man accomplice—same one who killed Tate—comes into the room behind Aspern and renders him unconscious, probably with a blow to the base of the skull. Then—wearing Tate’s hoodie, jeans, and sneakers—he drives the vehicle Aspern arrived in back to Aspern’s house, gets Tate’s Jeep from its place in the woods, and drives to the point where the trail opens into the lawn by the conservatory. You following this so far?”
“What happens if Aspern wakes up while the accomplice is gone?”
“A forceful enough blow to the base of the skull would have kept him immobile for quite a while, if not paralyzed him. And he might have been tied up.”
“Okay, so the accomplice is in the Jeep at the trail opening. What now?”
“Now is where the security camera video takes over. We see a hooded figure emerge from the Jeep and walk across the lawn toward the house, holding a mallet. He passes out of the camera’s range, breaks the glass panel in the conservatory door, and enters the house. While he’s taking off his hoodie, jeans, and sneakers, Lorinda is stripping Aspern. Then they put Tate’s clothes on him and drag him into the conservatory.”
“But he must have been shot standing up, for the bullet trajectories to turn out the way they did. How’d they manage that?”
“That had me stumped. Then I remembered seeing a device in the conservatory for moving heavy tropical plants—a hoist with ratcheted pulleys.”
“You figure they used that to stand him up and shoot him?”
“It’s a possibility. It’s also interesting that the shooter placed one of the shots through Aspern’s lower jaw—creating a rear exit wound that would destroy any evidence of an earlier blow to the base of the skull.”
Hardwick’s acid reflux expression had shifted to his more common skeptical frown. “So, after he was shot twice, they dumped him on the floor, facedown, like he’d been coming at Lorinda when she shot him and his momentum carried him forward?”
“That’s the way it looks. The accomplice leaves. Lorinda gets rid of evidence of Aspern’s earlier presence in the house—for example, the wine bottle that disappeared along with his phone. She calls Mike Morgan and announces that she just shot Billy Tate. And everyone later swallows that as an understandable misidentification as a result of Aspern being in Tate’s clothes, limited moonlight visibility, and the body ending up facedown on the floor.”
“Clever as hell,” said Hardwick. “Almost too fucking clever. But it’s conceivable. Not goddamn likely, but more conceivable than the first part of the story—where Tate supposedly goes to Lorinda with an unsolicited offer to kill her husband, and she immediately calls in her friendly neighborhood hit man, who grabs a handful of scalpels and starts slicing throats. That strikes me as fucking nuts.”
“The logistics of that do seem tangled, but I think the basic thrust is valid.”
“The thrust being what exactly?”
“Originally, we thought Tate was the killer. Then we thought Aspern was the killer, trying to make it look like it was Tate. Now I’m pretty sure it was a third individual, trying to make it look like it was Aspern.”
“This third guy being Lorinda’s hit-man accomplice?”
“Yes.”
“And the winner’s name is . . . ?
“My guess is Silas Gant.”
“Based on what? A ten-year-old story about Hanley Bullock dying while being visited by a neat guy with gray hair and a rough guy with ‘OTIS’ tattooed on his knuckles?”
“That, and the fact that Gant’s church was getting major donations from Angus Russell—more likely for services rendered than from the goodness of his heart.”
“Fucking hell, Gurney, you’re not just doing a dance out at the end of a fragile branch, there’s no goddamn branch at all!” Hardwick picked up his coffee mug and took a large swallow.
Gurney shrugged. “I may have the logistics wrong. The truth may be simpler than I’m making it out to be. But I’m convinced there’s an evil relationship at the heart of what’s been happening in Larchfield. And I’d like to prove it.”
“Laudable goal, Sherlock. Any clue on how to make it happen?”
Gurney finished his double espresso before answering in a lowered voice. “Blackmail might be an interesting approach.”
Hardwick leaned back in his creaky chair, apparently giving the suggestion serious thought. “Could be a profitable approach, considering the resources at the disposal of the wealthy widow.”
Gurney sometimes found it difficult to know when Hardwick was joking. “Putting aside the major felony of actual blackmail, I think a pretense of blackmail could provide an interesting window into Lorinda’s guilt or innocence.”
“Sounds to me like you’re putting aside a pot-of-gold opportunity that the good Lord has placed before us. But so be it. Tell me more.”
“I’m thinking we could send a text message to Lorinda from an anonymous prepaid phone. A message that sounds like it’s coming from someone who’s secretly been keeping an eye on her—and who not only saw what happened to Chandler Aspern in the greenhouse, but has photographs of it. The message could conclude with a request for a personal meeting at the Russell house—say tomorrow evening at eight o’clock—along with a demand for ten thousand dollars.”