“Past the pumpkin building toward the end of the concourse.”
“That means we’re going to converge. I’m one concourse over from you, moving in the same direction—following a procession of animals and a face-painted troupe of my own.”
“Animals?”
“The animals that were in the barn are being moved to the corrals behind the Ferris wheel. The barn is on fire.”
“Shit! I heard someone talking about a burning barn. I thought they were just confused about the fire in the arena. Okay, let me hang up. I got to pay attention here—but wait! You got any news on what’s happening up at your house?”
“I need to call my son and find out.”
“Let me know.”
As he ended the call, Madeleine and Winkler were turning onto a kind of rotary concourse that encircled the carnival rides and the corrals. A minute later Gurney’s target threesome went the same way, and by the time he reached the intersection, they were meeting up with the group of nine Hardwick had been following.
Moving among the animals and those clutches of fairgoers who remained ignorant of the unfolding disaster and undaunted by the threatening storm, the dozen little bodies defied Gurney’s efforts to identify any conspicuous outsider—any monstrous mini-adult in the guise of a child. As he watched, they gravitated toward the waist-high railing that separated the curving concourse from the rides.
Madeleine and Dennis and the alpacas were moving along past the rides toward the corrals. Gurney placed himself where he could see as far as possible in the direction of the corrals while still maintaining a clear view of the group gathering at the railing. He spotted Hardwick taking up a position where the second straight concourse fed into the circular one. Rather than reveal their connection by walking over and conferring with Hardwick directly, he took out his phone and called him.
When he answered, Hardwick was looking over at Gurney. “What’s with the redneck hat?”
“Ad hoc camouflage. Long story for another time. Tell me—have you spotted anyone else of interest, or are our prime candidates right here in front of us?”
“That’s them. And you can knock out about half on the basis of the pudge factor.”
“What factor?”
“Some of these kids are way too fat. From what I could see on the videos, our little Peter has a lean and hungry look.”
“So that leaves us with maybe six possibles?”
“I’d say more like two or three. In addition to the pudge factor, there’s the height factor, and the basic facial structure factor. Which leaves maybe one of your group, two of mine. And even those seem a bit of a stretch.”
“Which three are you talking about?”
“The one closest to you—idiot baseball hat, hand on the railing. The one next to him, in the black hoodie, hands in his pockets. And the one closest to me, wearing the blue satin basketball uniform three sizes too big. You got any better choices?”
“Let me take a closer look. I’ll call you back.”
He slipped the phone in his pocket, studying the twelve little bodies at the railing, with particular attention to the three highlighted by Hardwick. But there was a phrase the man had used that hit a nerve: a bit of a stretch.
A bit of a stretch, indeed. In fact, Gurney had a sick, sinking feeling that there was something preposterous about the whole notion—the notion that one of these restless, absurdly dressed middle-schoolers might actually be Peter Pan. As he changed his position in order to see more of their faces, he was tempted to abandon the whole endeavor, to accept the probability that Peter Pan had escaped the fairgrounds and was at that moment bound for places unknown, far from Walnut Crossing. Surely that was a saner position than believing that one of the little people at that railing—seemingly enthralled by the roar and clatter of the “amusements”—was a ruthless executioner.
Was it conceivable that the man whom Interpol credited with more than fifty hits, who cracked Mary Spalter’s skull on the edge of her bathtub, who hammered nails into Gus Gurikos’s eyes, who burned seven people to death in Cooperstown, who cut off Lex Bincher’s head, was now passing himself off as one of these children? As Gurney ambled past them as if he were trying to get a better view of the huge Ferris wheel, he found it mind-boggling to imagine any of them as a professional murderer—and not only a murderer but also a man who specialized in contracts others considered impossible.
That final thought pulled Gurney sideways to an issue he’d wondered about several times in the last few days but had spent no real time examining. It was probably the most perplexing question of alclass="underline"
What was so hard about the hit on Carl Spalter?
What was the “impossible” aspect? What made it a job for Panikos in the first place?
Perhaps the answer to that one question would unravel all the other secrets in the case. Gurney decided then and there to think his way through it until the truth emerged. The simplicity of the question persuaded him that it was the right question. It even restored in him a modest sense of optimism. He felt that he was on the right track.
Then something startling happened.
An answer occurred to him that was as simple as the question.
At first he was afraid to breathe—as though the solution were as fragile as smoke and breathing might blow it away. But the more he examined it, the more he tested its solidity, the more convinced he became that it was right. And if it was right, then the Spalter murder case was finally solved.
As he stared at the staggeringly simple explanation taking shape in his mind, he felt the tingling excitement that always accompanied a dawning truth.
He repeated the key question to himself. What was so hard about the hit on Carl Spalter? What had made it seem so impossible?
Then he laughed out loud.
Because the answer was, quite simply, nothing.
Nothing at all had made it seem impossible.
As he walked back past the figures at the railing, he double-checked the validity of his insight and all its implications by asking himself what light it cast into the remaining dark corners of the case. His feeling of excitement intensified as one mystery after another dissolved.
Now he understood why Mary Spalter had to die.
He knew who had ordered the shot that ended Carl Spalter’s life. The motive was as plain as day. And darker than a night in hell.
He knew what the terrible secret was, what the nails in Gus’s head were all about, and what the slaughter in Cooperstown was supposed to accomplish.
He could see how Alyssa and Klemper and Jonah all fit in the puzzle.
The mystery of the shot that came from a place it couldn’t have come from was no longer a mystery.
In fact, everything about the Spalter murder case was suddenly simple. Nauseatingly simple.
And it all underscored one inescapable truth. Peter Pan had to be stopped.
As Gurney pondered that final challenge, his accelerating thoughts were interrupted by another whump.
Chapter 60. Perfect Little Peter Pan
Some of the fairgoers who were wandering by stopped, cocked their heads, looked at one another with anxious frowns. But no one at the railing gave any sign of noticing anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps, Gurney thought, they were too wrapped up in the racket of the amusements and the happy cries of the amused. And if someone at the railing was responsible for this latest in the series of muffled explosions—if he’d rigged the incendiary with a timer or had sent an electronic signal with a remote detonator—he was certainly doing nothing to advertise the fact.
Recognizing that this was likely his best, and maybe last, opportunity to decide for himself if any of these individuals merited further attention—or if he’d hit a dead end in his “hot pursuit” of Panikos—Gurney moved to the railing, to a position that afforded a reasonably good view of their profiles.