The crime was not yet twenty-four hours old, and the scene was secured until at least the next morning, so we didn't enter the Gordon property, because to do so would have meant another sign-in, and I was trying to sign out and sign off. But we walked along the Murphy side of the hedges toward the bay. The hedges became stunted toward the saltwater and at a point some thirty feet from the water's edge, I could see over them. We kept walking to where the bay lapped against the Murphys' bulkhead. The Murphys had an old floating dock to the left, and to the right was the Gordons' fixed dock. The Spirocbete was missing.
Beth said, "The Marine Bureau took the boat to their docking area. The lab will work on it there." She asked me, "What do you think about the Murphys?" I think they did it."
"Did what?"
"Murdered the Gordons. Not directly. But they intercepted Tom and Judy on the deck, spoke to them for thirty minutes about the supermarket sales in the Saturday paper, the Gordons drew their guns, and blew their own brains out."
"Possible," Beth conceded. "But what happened to the guns?"
"Edgar made toilet paper holders out of them."
She laughed. "You're terrible. You'll be old someday."
"No, I won't."
Neither one of us spoke for a few seconds. We stood watching the bay. Water, like fire, is mesmerizing. Finally, Beth asked, "Were you having an affair with Judy Gordon?"
"If I was, I'd have told you and told Max right up front."
"You would have told Max. Not me."
"All right-I was not having an affair with Judy Gordon."
"But you were attracted to her."
"Every guy was. She was beautiful." I remembered to add, "And very bright," like I really gave a rat's ass about that. Well, sometimes I do, but I sometimes forget to list brains as an attribute. I added, "When you have a young, sexually attractive couple, maybe we should consider a sex angle."
She nodded. "We'll think about it."
From where we stood, I could see the flagpole in the Gordons' yard. The Jolly Roger still flew from the mast, and the two signal pennants hung from the crossbeam, aka, the yardarm. I asked Beth, "Can you draw those pennants?"
"Sure." She took her notebook and pen and sketched the two pennants. "You think that's relevant? A signal?"
"Why not? They're signal pennants."
"I think they're just decorative. But we'll find out."
"Right." I said to Beth, "Let's return to the scene of the crime."
We crossed the property line and went down to the Gordons' dock. I said, "Okay, I'm Tom, you're Judy. We left Plum Island at noon, and now it's about 5:30. We're home. I kill the engines. You get off the boat first and tie the rope. I heft the chest up to the dock. Right?"
"Right."
"I climb onto the dock, we lift the chest by the handles and start walking."
We sort of simulated this, walking side by side. I said, "We look up at the house. If anyone were on any of the three deck levels, we could see them. Right?"
"Right," she agreed. "Let's say someone is there, but we know him, or her, or them, and we keep walking."
"Okay. But you'd think that person would come down to the dock to help. Common courtesy. Anyway, we're still walking."
We continued, side by side, up to the second level of the deck. Beth said, "At some point, we would notice if the sliding glass door or screen was open. If it were, we'd be concerned, and might stop or go back. The door shouldn't be open."
"Unless they were expecting someone to be waiting for them in the house."
"Right." She said, "But that would have to be someone with the new key."
We continued toward the house to the top level of the deck and stopped a few feet from the two chalk outlines, Beth opposite Judy's and me opposite Tom's. I said, "The Gordons have a few more feet to go, a minute or less to live. What do they see?"
Beth stared down at the chalk outlines, then looked at the house in front of us, at the glass doors, at the immediate area left and right. Finally, she said, "They're still heading toward the house, which is twenty feet away. There's no indication they were trying to run. They're still side by side, there's no concealment anywhere, except the house, and no one can get off two head shots from that distance. They had to know the killer, or they were not alarmed by the killer."
"Right. I'm thinking the killer could have been lying in a chaise lounge, faking sleep, which is why he or she didn't go down to greet the Gordons at the dock. The Gordons knew this person and maybe Tom called out, 'Hey, joe, get up and help us with this chest of Ebola vaccine. Or anthrax. Or money. So, the guy gets up, yawns, takes a rew steps toward them from any of these chaises, gets within spitting range, pulls a pistol, and drills them through their heads. Right?"
She replied, "Possible." She walked around the chalk outlines and stood where the killer must have stood, not five feet away from the feet of the chalk outlines. I moved up to where Tom had been standing. Beth raised her right hand and held her right wrist with her left hand. She pointed her finger right at my face and said, "Bang."
I said, "They were not carrying the chest when they were shot. It would fly out of Tom's hand when he was shot. Tom and Judy put the chest down first."
"I'm not sure they were carrying any chest. That's your theory, not mine."
"Then where is the chest that was always in the boat?"
"Who knows? Anywhere. Look at those two outlines, John. They're lying so close together, I wonder if they could have been carrying a four-foot-long chest between them."
I looked back at the outlines. She had a point, but I said, "They could have put the chest down a few feet back, then walked toward their killer, who may have been lying on the chaise or standing here or had just walked out of this sliding door."
"Maybe. In any case, I think the Gordons were acquainted with their killer or killers."
"Agreed." I said to Beth, "I don't think it was chance that put the killer there and the Gordons there. It would have been easier for the killer to do the shooting inside the house rather than out here. But he chose this spot-he set up his shots right here."
"Why?"
"The only reason I can think of is that he had a registered pistol, and he didn't want the bullets subject to ballistics later, if he became a suspect."
She nodded and looked out toward the bay.
I continued, "Inside the house, the rounds would have lodged somewhere, and maybe he wouldn't have been able to recover them. So, he goes for two close-up head shots with a large-caliber pistol and with nothing between the exit wounds and the deep bay."
She nodded again. "Looks that way, doesn't it?" She added, "That changes the profile of the killer. He's not a hophead, or an assassin with an unregistered piece. It's someone with no access to an untraceable piece-it's a good citizen with a registered pistol. Is that what you're suggesting?"
I said, "It fits what I see here."
"That's why you want the names of locals with registered weapons."
"Right." I added, "Big-caliber, registered as opposed to an illegal or hot weapon, and probably an automatic, pistol as opposed to a revolver because revolvers are nearly impossible to silence. Let's start with that theory."
Beth said, "How does a good citizen with a registered pistol get an illegal silencer?"
"Good question." I pondered the whole profile I'd come up with and said, "Like anything else in this case, there's always one inconsistency that screws up a good theory."
"Right." She added, "And then there are those twenty.45 caliber automatics on Plum Island."
"Indeed there are."
We talked it out awhile, trying to piece this thing together, trying to make it 5:30 p.m. yesterday, instead of 5:30 p.m. today.
I could see a uniformed Southold policeman through the glass doors, but he didn't see us and moved away.
After about five minutes of noodling, I said to Beth Penrose, "When I was a kid, I used to come out here from Manhattan with my All-American-type family-Dad, Mom, brother Jim, and sister Lynne. We usually rented the same cottage near Uncle Harry's big Victorian, and we spent two weeks getting eaten by mosquitoes. We got poison ivy, we got fish hooks in our fingers, and then we got sunburned. We must have enjoyed it, because we looked forward to it every year, the Coreys on their annual S amp;M outing." I She smiled.
I continued, "One year, when I was about ten, I found a musket ball, and it blew my mind. I mean, some guy fired that thing a hundred or maybe two hundred years before. Then Harry's wife, my Aunt June-God rest her soul-took me to a place near the hamlet of Cutchogue that she said was once a Corchaug Indian village, and she showed me how to look for arrowheads and cooking pits and bone needles and all that. Incredible."
Beth said nothing, but she was looking at me as if this was very interesting.
I went on, "I remember that I couldn't sleep nights thinking about musket balls and arrowheads, settlers and Indians, British soldiers and Continental soldiers, and so forth. Before the two weeks of magic end, I knew I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. It didn't work out that way, but I think that was one reason I became a detective."
I explained to her about Uncle Harry's driveway and how they once used cinders and clam shells to keep down the dust and mud. I said, "So, a thousand years from now, an archaeologist is digging around, and he finds these cinders and shells, and he makes the assumption it was a long cooking pit. Actually, he's found a driveway, but he's going to make what he thinks is a cooking pit fit his theory. Follow?"
"Sure."
"Right. Okay, here's my speech to my class. Want to hear it?"
"Shoot."
"Okay, class-what you see at the scene of a homicide is frozen in time, it is no longer a moving, living dynamic. You can create several stories about this still life, but these are only theories. A detective, like an archaeologist, can assemble hard facts and solid scientific evidence, and still draw the wrong conclusions. Add to this, a few lies and red herrings and people who are trying to help but make mistakes. Plus people who tell you what you want to hear consistent with your theory, and people with hidden agendas, and the murderer himself, who may have planted false clues. Through all this mess of contradictions, inconsistencies, and lies is the truth." I said to Beth, "At this point, if my timing is right, the bell rings and I say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, it is your job to know the truth.' "
She said, "Bravo."
"Thank you."
"So, who killed the Gordons?" she asked.
"Beats the hell out of me," I replied.