“We’re double-checking the video files from the mortuary camera. Our tech found a tiny audio blip, which may be nothing, but we want to be sure.”
Stryker turned to Hilda Russell.
“Anything to add?”
She responded with a priestly smile. “Not at the moment.”
Finally, Stryker turned to Gurney. She pointed at the text. “According to that, your old NYPD partner decided to try his hand at extortion. You have any thoughts about that?”
“Considering what happened last night, it’s difficult to read that as an actual extortion attempt. By way of background, Morgan told me a couple of days ago he had serious doubts about Lorinda’s version of how and why she shot Aspern. He’d found a discrepancy in the visual evidence.”
Stryker leaned forward. “What sort of discrepancy?”
“Aspern’s shoelaces in the approach video were tied differently from the shoelaces in the postmortem photos of his body on the conservatory floor.”
“Did you confirm that?”
“I did.”
“What does it mean to you?”
“Either Aspern’s body was tampered with after the shooting, or the individual in the approach video was someone other than Aspern. Either way, it suggests that Lorinda’s story was either incomplete or a complete fabrication.”
“Did Morgan confront her?”
“He said he wanted to test his idea first.”
“How?”
“He didn’t say. But the text that Brad just showed us may be the answer.”
Stryker picked up her copy and read it again.
Gurney could see in her eyes a rapid weighing of the possibilities.
“He sent this threat to . . . evaluate her response?”
Gurney paused before answering. It was important to get this just right—to ensure that attributing certain discoveries and conclusions to Morgan rather than to himself didn’t distort the underlying reality of the situation.
“Morgan was a troubled man. He suffered from anxiety and self-hatred, conditions that worsened considerably with his wife’s illness and death. In his state of mind, it’s inconceivable that he’d concoct a money-making scheme. I think this was a grandiose, suicidal confrontation with evil. You don’t bring a flamethrower to a discussion of your blackmail demands. I can see a Glock. Even the Uzi. But not a flamethrower.”
Stryker was silent for a long moment, keeping her gaze on Gurney.
“If the text was an effort to evaluate Lorinda Russell’s response, how would you explain what actually went down?”
“I think it’s clear that Morgan interpreted her failure to report the blackmail demand to the police as a sign of her guilt. So he came prepared for a confrontation.”
“Knowing that she’d probably make her own preparations and that he might be killed?”
“Yes. But he was determined to take the opposition down with him.”
Stryker steepled her fingers. “You sound very sure of all this.”
Gurney nodded. “I have a history with Morgan. What he did is consistent with what I know about him.”
“We’ll come back to that. First, I want to address a structural issue. In losing Chief Morgan, the department has lost what little command structure it had. Last night’s carnage obviously demands a thorough investigation with manpower resources that simply do not exist in Larchfield at this time. The best solution I see is for my office to assume overall responsibility for the investigation.”
She gestured toward Slovak and Barstow. “This doesn’t reflect in any way on your handling of the case. I want your good work to continue. Tomorrow morning, Detective Lieutenant Derek Hapsburg from my staff will step into a supervisory role and bring in whatever additional resources the case requires. When he arrives, we’ll sit down with you for a briefing on the facts. At that time, be ready to provide him with copies of the case files, along with the pertinent videos, et cetera. Any questions?”
Slovak raised his hand. “What about the media mob outside?”
“Give them no information. And I mean none. Refer them to Sergeant Pat Lemon, my media liaison. She’ll deal with them.”
Stryker looked at Barstow.
She shook her head. “No questions.”
“Reverend Russell?”
She produced one of her mild clerical smiles. “The additional resources you mentioned will certainly be welcome.”
“I should have asked—in your new role as acting mayor, would you prefer to be addressed that way, or shall we stay with Reverend?”
“Hilda would be entirely adequate.”
Stryker produced a cool smile of her own, then stood up from the table, indicating the meeting was over.
As the others rose to leave, she motioned to Gurney to stay.
When they were alone, she closed the conference room door and sat down across from him. “You seemed quite certain that your friend Morgan couldn’t be a blackmailer but could be a homicidal-suicidal maniac. Did I understand that correctly?”
“More or less.”
“What’s the ‘less’ part?”
“You referred to him as my friend. That’s a bit of an exaggeration.”
“Okay. What makes you so sure about the motives of this non-friend?”
“Apart from simple logic and the evidence on the ground?”
“Apart from that.”
After considering the pluses and minuses of revealing the event at the heart of his relationship with Mike Morgan, he decided to go ahead and tell Stryker the story of the apartment house shoot-out.
She paid close attention and at the end nodded slightly, as if she might be agreeing that it was relevant in understanding Morgan’s motives. Then she changed the subject.
“I’ve been in two meetings with you now, and both times I’ve gotten the impression that you know more than you’re saying. Is that true?”
“It’s not anything I know. It’s just a feeling.”
“What kind of feeling?”
“That it’s all too complicated.”
“What do you mean?”
“What we have here is a series of winding narratives that turn one way, then another way, but never seem to straighten out. When you get to the heart of it, there’s a straight line in every crime. But the straight line in what’s happening here is eluding me.”
“Maybe fourteen dead bodies can’t be lined up that neatly.”
Gurney didn’t reply.
“Do you share the doubts Morgan had about Chandler Aspern’s death?”
“I do.”
“Do you believe Lorinda Russell was involved?”
“I do. Along with an accomplice.”
“And who might that be?”
“We suspected Silas Gant, but it couldn’t have been him. He was addressing a religious gun rally hundreds of miles away the night of Aspern’s death.”
Stryker began tapping her pen lightly on the table.
“So, you’re telling me we still have a murderer on the loose?”
“It would seem so.”
55
After sharing with Stryker his other thoughts on the peculiarities of the case—which he still viewed as a single entity, convinced as he was that all the fatalities were connected by a single underlying cause—Gurney headed back to Walnut Crossing.
During the drive, he thought of little else but the open question of Lorinda’s accomplice in the murder of Aspern. If the individual approaching the conservatory wearing Billy Tate’s clothes in the security camera video wasn’t Aspern and wasn’t Gant, it had to be someone else of roughly the same size.
Someone else.
That simple phrase had an odd resonance in Gurney’s mind, the feeling of an elusive recollection that only became more so the harder he tried to identify it. When he turned his attention away from it, the feeling grew stronger. When he pursued it, it faded. It was frustrating—that stubborn trait of memory that refuses to be coerced, allowing access only when one stops beating on the door.