He came up with zero on all three searches.
His eyelids were starting to feel heavy, and the burst of energy he’d felt earlier was just about expended. It had been a long day in Long Falls, and it was time to head for Walnut Crossing. As he was about to pull away from the curb, a black Ford Explorer pulled in just in front of him. Chunky Frank McGrath stepped out and walked back to Gurney’s car window.
“You all done here?”
“For today, anyway. I need to get home before I fall asleep. By the way, do you recall back around the time of the shooting a guy by the name of Freddie living here?”
“Squatting here, you mean?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s what I mean.”
“Fre-de-ri-co.” McGrath’s dragged-out Spanish accent reeked of contempt. “What about him?”
“Did you know he disappeared?”
“Maybe I did. Long time ago.”
“You ever hear anything about it?”
“Like what?”
“Like why he disappeared.”
“Why the hell would I care about that? They come and go. One less sack of shit for me to deal with. Nice if they all disappeared. Make that happen, I’ll owe you one.”
Gurney tore half a sheet of paper out of his notebook, wrote his cell number on it, and handed it to McGrath. “If you hear anything about Freddie, any rumor of where he might be, I’d appreciate a call. In the meantime, Frank, take it easy. Life is short.”
“Thank Christ for small favors!”
For most of his drive home, Gurney felt as though he’d opened a puzzle box and discovered that several large pieces were missing. The one thing he was sure of was that no round fired from the apartment in question could have struck Carl Spalter in the temple without first passing through the metal arm of that light pole. And that was inconceivable. No doubt the missing puzzle pieces would eventually resolve the apparent contradiction. If only he knew what sort of pieces he was looking for, and how many.
The two-hour drive home to Walnut Crossing was mostly over secondary roads, through the rolling patchwork landscape of fields and woods that Gurney liked and Madeleine loved. But he noticed very little of it.
He was immersed in the world of the murder.
Immersed—until, at the end of the gravelly town road, he passed his pond and turned up his pasture lane. That’s when he was jarred into the present by the sight of four visiting cars—three Priuses and one Range Rover—parked in the grassy area alongside the house. It looked like a mini convention of the environmentally responsible and extravagantly countrified.
Oh, Jesus. The damn yoga club dinner!
He glanced at the time—6:49 p.m.—on the dashboard clock. Forty-nine minutes late. He shook his head, frustrated at his forgetfulness.
When he entered the big ground-floor space that served as kitchen, dining room, and sitting area, there was an energetic conversation in progress at the dining table. The six guests were familiar—they were people he’d been introduced to at local concerts and art shows—but he wasn’t sure of any of their names. (Madeleine had once pointed out, however, that he never forgot the names of murderers.)
Everyone looked up from the conversation and their food, most of them smiling or looking pleasantly curious.
“Sorry I’m late. I ran into a little difficulty.”
Madeleine smiled apologetically. “Dave runs into difficulty more often than most people stop for gas.”
“Actually, he arrived at exactly the right time!” The speaker was an ebullient, heavyset woman whom Gurney recognized as one of Madeleine’s fellow counselors at the crisis center. All he could remember about her name was that it was peculiar. She went on enthusiastically, “We were talking about crime and punishment. And in walks a man whose life is all about that very subject. What could be more timely?” She pointed to an empty chair at the table with the air of a hostess welcoming the guest of honor to her party. “Join us! Madeleine told us you were off on one of your adventures, but she was pretty stingy with the details. Might it have something to do with crime and/or punishment?”
One of the male guests jogged his chair a few inches to the side to give Gurney more room to get to the empty one.
“Thanks, Scott.”
“Skip.”
“Skip. Right. When I see you, the name Scott always pops into my mind. I worked for years with a Scott who looked a lot like you.”
Gurney chose to think of this little lie as a gesture of social kindness. It was surely preferable to the truth, which was that he had no interest in the man and less than none in remembering his name. The problem with the excuse, to which Gurney had given no thought, was that Skip was seventy-five and emaciated, with an Einstein-like explosion of unruly white hair. In what way this cadaverous member of the Three Stooges might resemble an active homicide detective was an interesting question.
Before anyone could ask it, the heavyset woman bulldozed forward. “While Dave’s getting some food on his plate, shall we fill him in on our discussion?”
Gurney glanced around, concluding that a vote on that proposition might fail, but—Bingo! Her name came to him. Filomena, Mena for short—was clearly a leader, not a follower. She went on. “Skip made the point that the only purpose of prison is punishment, since rehabilitation … How did you put it, Skip?”
He looked pained, as if being called on by Mena to speak brought back some dreadful embarrassment from his school years. “I don’t remember at the moment.”
“Ah. Now I remember! You said that the only point of prison is punishment, since rehabilitation is nothing but a liberal fantasy. But then Margo said that properly focused punishment is indispensable to rehabilitation. But I’m not sure Madeleine agreed with that. And then Bruce said—”
A stern-looking gray-haired woman interrupted. “I didn’t say ‘punishment.’ I said ‘clear negative consequences.’ The connotations are quite different.”
“All right, then, Margo is all for clear negative consequences. But then Bruce said … Oh, my goodness, Bruce, what did you say?”
A fellow at the head of the table with a dark mustache and a tweed jacket produced a condescending smirk. “Nothing profound. I just made a minor observation that our prison system is a wretched waste of tax revenue—an absurd revolving-door institution that breeds more crime than it prevents.” He sounded like a very polite, very angry man whose preferred alternative to incarceration would be execution. It was difficult to picture him immersed in yoga meditation, breathing deeply, unified with all creation.
Gurney smiled at the thought as he spooned some of the remaining vegetarian lasagna onto his plate from a serving dish in the middle of the table. “You part of the yoga club, Bruce?”
“My wife is one of the instructors, which I suppose makes me an honorary member.” His tone was more sarcastic than amiable.
Two seats away, a pale ash blonde, whose only cosmetic seemed to be a shiny, transparent face cream, spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. “I wouldn’t say I’m an instructor, just a member of the group.” She licked her colorless lips discreetly, as if to remove invisible crumbs. “Getting back to our topic, isn’t all crime really a form of mental illness?”
Her husband rolled his eyes.
“Actually, Iona, there’s some fascinating new research on that,” said a sweet-looking woman with a soft round face, sitting across from Gurney. “Did anyone else read the journal article about the tumors? It seems there was a middle-aged man, quite normal, no unusual problems—until he began getting overpowering urges to have sex with small children, quite out of control, with no prior history. To make a long story short, medical tests revealed a fast-growing brain tumor. The tumor was removed, and the destructive sexual obsession disappeared with it. Interesting, isn’t it?”