“Later, with the camera activated, he made all the sounds we heard on the video, building up to the moment when he played back the sound of the casket being broken open. You saw all the rest on the video—him emerging in Tate’s clothes, stumbling around the room, using Tate’s phone to send those texts to Selena Cursen and Aspern.”
Stryker was leaning forward now. “Why Aspern?”
“Framing Aspern was an option from the beginning, and sending him that text laid the groundwork.”
“What did he do with Tate’s body?”
“Cut off the hands to leave Tate’s fingerprints in the storage unit and wherever else they might be useful, took some blood to leave at Angus’s for DNA identification, then cut the rest of the body into pieces and buried them in the woods near Aspern’s house.”
“My God,” muttered Stryker. In her eyes Gurney could see her mind racing through everything she knew about the case, testing the credibility of what she’d just been told.
A nurse with a friendly face gave a perfunctory knock on the glass door behind Stryker and slid it open. “Sorry to interrupt, I need to look in on my patients.” She checked the numbers on the screen next to Hardwick’s bed and the fluid level in his plastic IV bag.
“I think you’ll live. We’ll keep you here for twenty-four hours, and if all your levels are stable at that point, we’ll turn you loose. One of our aftercare recommendations will be that you try to avoid major head-on collisions. At least for a while.” She smiled and turned to Gurney.
“Any pain?”
“Not really.”
“Good. As far as I know, you’re all set to go.” She smiled again and departed, sliding the glass door shut behind her.
Stryker was frowning, as though her review of the facts had hit a sticking point.
“According to your scenario, Peale went through that elaborate charade of Tate’s revival in the mortuary specifically to create the misleading security camera video. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“But I read in the interview notes that he claimed at first there was no video. Why would he do that?”
“I wondered about that myself—until a computer forensics expert told me that cloud-based backups are so common these days it’s the first thing they’d look for. If Peale was aware of that, he would have known that the video would come to light—and his professed ignorance of its existence would only add to its credibility.”
“You have a high opinion of Mr. Peale’s talent for deception.”
“I do.”
“One more question. If he set up that bloody scene at his house as part of his disappearing act—a way of escaping without anyone thinking he was still alive—why would he take time out to kill you?”
Gurney shrugged. “It doesn’t seem very practical, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I’ll have to give that some thought.”
Hardwick spoke up. “I’ll tell you why. Once Sherlock here latches on to something, the son of a bitch never lets go. Peale was not stupid. Maybe he figured the only way to be sure this guy wouldn’t come knocking on his door a year down the road was to ice him now.”
After a long silence, Stryker nodded.
“That’s enough for now. We’ll be in touch.”
Since Gurney and Madeleine had ridden together to the hospital in the local EMS ambulance, they had no vehicle there, and an off-duty security guard offered to drive them home.
When they arrived at the point between the barn and the pond, where the town road dead-ended into their property, Madeleine asked that they be let out. It took Gurney a minute to manage his exit from the car and get upright on the crutches the hospital had provided. After the guard had refused Madeleine’s offer of payment for the ride and had headed back down the road, she suggested sitting for a while in the pair of lawn chairs by the pond.
With Gurney being new to crutches, it took some time to get there. When they were finally settled in, Madeleine explained that she was purposely delaying the sight of the burned henhouse and the terrifying memories it would evoke. She felt all that would be easier to face if she could wrap herself first in the beauty of the morning.
The rising sun was visible above the eastern ridge. The earlier thunderstorm was long gone, the sky was clear, the air was pleasantly cool, the water droplets on the grass were glimmering points of light. Swirls of tiny insects were rising and falling over the surface of the pond. Redwing blackbirds were building nests in the reeds. The night’s rain seemed to have intensified the blue of the wild irises by the road.
He reached out and held her hand.
“I was thinking,” she said, “that maybe we should go ahead and get a pair of alpacas.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I mean, I feel like we’ve been given a sign. Sort of, anyway.”
“How’s that?”
“If we hadn’t been talking about alpacas, we probably wouldn’t have thought of building the shed extension on the henhouse. And if we hadn’t built the shed, the saw wouldn’t have been out there, and I wouldn’t have known how to use it. So, in a way, talking about alpacas ended up saving your life.”
“Hmm.”
“So, what do you think?”
EPILOGUE
Martin Carmody’s best PR efforts were no match for the sheer number of homicides now associated with Larchfield. The media continued to befoul the reputation of the place in a way that seemed irreversible. The nadir was a RAM-TV special, Village of the Dead.
From legal and tax points of view, Silas Gant’s Church of the Patriarchs turned out to be unusually complex. From a practical point of view, it simply fell apart. In the absence of their well-connected leader and protector, the remaining Patriarchs faded back into the motorcycle-gang netherworld from which they had come. The frightened, emotionally damaged young women who had been kept at Gant’s fortified compound were taken under the wing of a state social service agency, where they were offered all the forms of transitional help and direction that the “caring professions” are empowered to provide.
Discovered among Danforth Peale’s assets were three upstate New York cemeteries. In one mausoleum several unidentified bodies were discovered in advanced stages of decomposition, along with a new one, easily recognizable as Randall Fleck.
Selena Cursen and Raven (née Lulu Rubin) were released from the hospital, put the property with the burned and bullet-ridden house up for sale, and moved into a holistic community for trauma victims in California.
Mary Kane’s body remained for six weeks at the morgue. No relatives could be located. The Nocturnal Bird Club, to which she’d left her meager estate, finally assumed responsibility for her burial.
Angus and Lorinda Russell were both cremated with no one in attendance. Hilda Russell directed that their ashes be disposed of as medical waste.
Silas Gant was given a high-profile funeral by the Armed Ministers Movement. He was eulogized as a true Crusader, ready to stand his ground for God against the rising tide of atheists, socialists, and queers. His killing was condemned as a terrorist attack on Christianity.
Linda Mason’s sister had her body transported to the tiny upstate town of Vorlandville, where she was born. She was buried in the Gate of Angels cemetery next to the graves of her parents.