Gurney’s phone kept ringing. The ID said it was Paulette Purley. He put it back in his pocket.
“You live in this apartment?”
“Mostly.”
“You going to be around later?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe we could talk again?”
“Maybe.”
“My name’s Dave Gurney. Can you tell me yours?”
“Bolo.”
“Like the string tie?”
“No, man, not like the tie.” He grinned, showing off the gold teeth again. “Like the knife.”
Chapter 17. An Impossible Shot
Gurney stood at the window, phone in hand, gazing over the avenue and river at the Spalter crime scene and burial ground. He could see Paulette standing roughly in the middle of it, a blue umbrella in one hand, a phone in the other.
He backed away from the window several paces to the spot in the room where, according to the forensic photo, the rifle had been found on its tripod. He knelt down to lower his line of sight to the approximate height of the rifle scope, and spoke into his phone.
“Okay, Paulette, open the umbrella and place it where you remember Carl’s body lying.”
He watched as she did it, wishing he’d brought his binoculars. Then he looked down at the police sketch of the scene that he had on the floor in front of him. It showed two positions for Carclass="underline" the spot where he was standing when he was hit and the spot where he fell to the ground. Both positions were between his mother’s open grave in front and two rows of folding chairs in back. There was a number written on the sketch by each of the sixteen chairs, presumably keying them to a separate list of the mourners who had occupied them.
“Paulette, can you recall by any chance who was sitting where?”
“Of course. I can still see it like it happened this morning. Every detail. Like that trickle of blood on the side of his head. That drop of blood on the snow. God, will that ever go away?”
Gurney had memories like that. Every cop did. “Maybe not completely. But it’ll come to you less frequently.” He neglected to mention that the reason some memories like that had faded in his own mind was because they’d been pushed aside by more terrible ones. “But tell me about the people sitting in the chairs, especially those in the first row.”
“Before he stood up, Carl was on the end. That would be on the right side of the row, looking from where you are now. Next to him, his daughter, Alyssa. Next to her, an empty chair. Next to that, Mary Spalter’s three female cousins from Saratoga, all in their seventies. Actually triplets, and still dressing alike. Cute, or weird, depending on your point of view. Then another empty chair. And in the eighth chair, Jonah—as far from Carl as he could get. No surprise there.”
“And the second row?”
“The second row was taken by eight ladies from Mary Spalter’s retirement community. I believe they were all members of some organization there. Oh … what was it? Something odd. Elder something … Elder Force—that was it.”
“Elder Force? What kind of organization is that?”
“I’m not sure. I spoke to one of the ladies briefly. Something about … give me a second. Yes. They have a motto, or saying, as I recall. ‘Elder Force: It’s Never Too Late to Do Good.’ Or words to that effect. I got the impression that they were involved in some sort of charitable activities. Mary Spalter had been a member.”
He made a mental note to look up Elder Force on the Internet. “Do you know if anyone had expected Kay to be at the funeral, or expressed surprise that she wasn’t?”
“I didn’t hear anyone ask about it. Most people who knew the Spalters were aware there was a problem—that Kay and Carl were separated.”
“Okay. So Carl was at one end of the row, Jonah at the other?”
“Yes.”
“How long after Carl got up from his chair was he hit?”
“I don’t know. Four or five seconds? I can picture him standing up … turning to walk to the podium … taking one, two steps … and that’s when it happened. As I said, everyone thought he tripped. But that’s what you would think, isn’t it? Unless you heard a gunshot, but nobody did.”
“Because of the firecrackers?”
“Oh, God, yes, the firecrackers. Some idiot had been setting them off all morning. It was such a distraction.”
“Okay. So you remember Carl taking one or two steps. Could you go to the spot you recall Carl reaching at the moment he started to collapse?”
“That’s easy enough. He was passing directly in front of Alyssa.”
Gurney could see her moving maybe eight or ten feet to the right of the umbrella on the ground.
“Here,” she said.
He squinted, making sure he was seeing her position clearly. “Are you positive?”
“Positive this is the spot? Absolutely!”
“You have that much faith in your memory?”
“I do, but it’s not just that. It’s the way we always arrange the chairs. They’re set up in rows the same length as the grave itself, so everyone can face it without turning. We add as many rows as we need, but the orientation of the chairs to the grave is always the same.”
Gurney said nothing, was just trying to absorb what he was hearing and seeing. Then a question occurred to him that had been at the back of his mind ever since his first reading of the incident report. “I was wondering about something. The Spalter family had a high profile. I assume they were socially well connected. So—”
“Why was the funeral so modest? Is that what you’re wondering?”
“Fourteen mourners, if I’m counting right, aren’t many under the circumstances.”
“That was the decedent’s choice. I was told that Mary Spalter had added a codicil to her will naming the individuals she wanted with her at the end.”
“You mean at her interment?”
“Yes. Her three cousins, two sons, granddaughter, and the eight women from Elder Force. I think the family—Carl, actually—was planning a much larger memorial event to occur sometime later, but … well …” Her voice trailed off. After a moment’s silence, she asked, “Is there anything else?”
“One last question. How tall was Carl?”
“How tall? Six-one, maybe six-two. Carl could look intimidating. Why do you ask?”
“Just trying to picture the scene as accurately as I can.”
“Okay. Is that it, then?”
“I think so, but … if you don’t mind, just stand where you are for a minute. I want to check something.” Keeping his eyes fixed on Paulette as best he could, Gurney rose from his kneeling position—where the rifle had been found on its tripod. He moved slowly to his left as far as he could go and still manage to maintain a line of sight to Paulette through one of the apartment’s two windows. He repeated this, moving as far as he could to the right. After that he went to the windows, stepping up on each windowsill in turn, to see as much as he could see.
When he got down, he thanked Paulette for her help, told her he’d be talking to her again soon, ended the call, and put the phone back in his pocket. Then he stood for a long while in the middle of the room, trying to make sense of a situation that suddenly made no sense at all.
There was a problem with the light pole on the far side of Axton Avenue. The horizontal cross-member was in the way. If Carl Spalter was anywhere near six feet tall and had been standing anywhere near the spot Paulette had indicated, there was no way the fatal shot to his head could have come from that apartment.
The apartment where the murder weapon was found.
The apartment where the BCI evidence team found gunpowder residues that matched the factory loading of a .220 Swift cartridge—which was consistent with the recovered rifle and consistent with the bullet fragments extracted from Carl Spalter’s brain.