“Here’s the first thought that came to mind. Someone who was aware of Lerman’s plan to blackmail Slade saw it as an opportunity to kill Lerman and let Slade take the blame.”
“Like who? With what motive?”
“Possibly Lerman’s son. He despised his father and knew about his life insurance policy.”
“You’re saying Lerman’s son could have gotten into Slade’s lodge on a day when he wasn’t there, swiped the camo outfit, got the axe and pruning clipper out of the shed, then followed Lenny the night he went to see Slade, chopped off his head, and buried him there without Slade knowing?”
“Something like that.”
“So, how come Slade’s attorney didn’t dangle this evil son in front of the jury?”
“He did, in a way, in his closing argument; but he couldn’t do more with it, because there was no physical evidence to put him at the site, and he supposedly had a solid alibi.”
“Any other options?”
“Suppose someone who hated Slade gave Lerman sensitive information about Slade and suggested the extortion plan. Maybe the idea was for Lerman to do the work, and they’d split the money. But then he decides to kill Lerman on Slade’s property rather than going through with the blackmail plan. Maybe the idea of framing Slade for murder appealed to him more than extorting money from him.”
Hardwick stared skeptically at his coleslaw. “Any idea who this criminal mastermind might be?”
“None. And there’s a problem with this scenario. It doesn’t track with the excerpts from Lerman’s diary that were presented at the trial.”
“So, basically, you have no fucking idea what’s going on.”
Gurney poured syrup on his pancakes. “I’d like to know what damaging information Lerman had on Slade. The only mention of it in Lerman’s diary was something that went down between Ziko and someone by the name of Sally Bones. That mean anything to you?”
Hardwick took a large bite of his BLT. He shook his head.
“I did a search on it,” said Gurney, “but it led nowhere.”
Hardwick swallowed, then sucked at his teeth. “That wouldn’t by any chance be another of your subtle requests?”
Gurney shrugged. “Sally Bones. Interesting name. Could belong to a low-level mobster who never got enough media attention to pop up on the internet. But he may have come to the attention of law enforcement at some point in his career. If you get an itch to check it out with your old state police contacts, there’s another name you might want to mention. Ian Valdez.”
“Who the hell is Ian Valdez?”
“Good question.”
22
GURNEY’S DRIVE HOME FROM THUMBURG WAS NOT A happy one. The information Hardwick had dug up on Slade, apart from a few unpleasant facts about the man’s fencing-champion father, added nothing of substance to what he already knew.
By the time he parked in his usual spot by the asparagus bed, it was a little after four. The sky was already darkening and an icy breeze was blowing. On evenings like this, Madeleine enjoyed having a fire blazing on the big fieldstone hearth.
He zipped up his jacket, went to the woodpile behind the chicken coop, and brought an armload of split cherry logs into the house. The aroma of baking bread greeted him. As he carried the logs to the fireplace, he could hear the strains of a baroque cello piece coming from Madeleine’s music room upstairs. He took off his jacket and set about arranging the wood in the firebox. It was a task he enjoyed—getting the geometry and spacing of the logs just right to ensure that the fire would start easily and burn steadily without further attention.
The stove timer chimed, the cello music stopped, and a minute later Madeleine entered the kitchen. She removed the bread from the oven and placed it on a cooling rack.
“Oh, good,” she said, seeing him at the fireplace. “I was about to do that myself. I can’t seem to get warm. Did you see your package?” She pointed to a flat box on the table by the French doors. “It arrived by FedEx, right after I got home.”
He made a final adjustment to the top log before going over to the package.
He recognized Marcus Thorne’s return address. He ripped open the package and slid a pile of documents onto the table. The sheet on top was headlined, “Evidence and Witness Files Provided by the Prosecution to the Defense.”
Gurney scanned through the list of enclosures—transcripts of interviews, the ME’s on-site notes, the autopsy report, crime scene photos, and some phone call records. Thorne hadn’t labeled any of the documents as contradictory or exculpatory, which suggested they were consistent with what Stryker presented at the trial.
“Have you run into any new oddities in the case?” Madeleine was peeling a carrot at the sink island, her tone of voice determinedly nonchalant.
“Maybe one or two. Hard to say.” The rabbit “oddity” was surely more significant than his reply suggested, but he didn’t want to mention it to her, at least not now.
She paused to regard him skeptically, then continued peeling the carrot. He gathered up the pile of documents from the table, carried them into the den, and spread them out on his desk.
It was getting dark. Looking out the north window, he could barely see the outline of the pine ridge above the high pasture. He switched on the desk lamp and read through the list of documents again, starting with a transcript of the interview with Bruno Lanka, the hunter who found Lerman’s body. The document included the interviewer’s name—Detective Lieutenant Scott Derlick.
S. Derlick: Please state your full name and address.
B. Lanka: Bruno Lanka, 39 Carrack Avenue, Garville, New York.
S. Derlick: What brought you to this area?
B. Lanka: Deer season. I’m a hunter.
S. Derlick: Did you have permission to hunt on this property?
B. Lanka: I thought it was state land.
S. Derlick: Where did you enter the woods?
B. Lanka: Mile or so down the road.
S. Derlick: What time was that?
B. Lanka: A little before six this morning. Dawn’s good for deer. Dawn and dusk.
S. Derlick: Did you remain in one spot, or did you move around?
B. Lanka: I like to move around.
S. Derlick: Did you see any property boundary markers?
B. Lanka: No.
S. Derlick: Any reason you came in this direction from the parking area?
B. Lanka: This way was uphill. When I start out, I like to head uphill. So when I’m tired, or dragging out a carcass, it’s downhill to the car.
S. Derlick: What drew your attention to the buried body?
B. Lanka: The back of the foot, the heel. It was sticking up out of the dirt.
S. Derlick: What did you do when you saw the heel?
B. Lanka: I went over to look closer. I’m thinking it was just the back of a boot. Then I’m thinking why the fuck would somebody bury a boot? I kick away some of the dirt. I see there’s a foot in the boot. I kick away more dirt, the foot’s attached to a leg. Then there’s the stink. Could make you sick, that stink. That’s when I think holy shit, what the fuck is this? And I call 911.
S. Derlick: Apart from kicking dirt away from the victim’s foot, did you disturb the scene in any other way?’
B. Lanka: No, nothing like that.