Simone’s display of rage felt authentic. But Gurney wasn’t sure if it was rage against an evil hypocrite or against a former partner who moved on to a better life—a life that excluded her.
“Why did you stab him?”
She shrugged. “We weren’t getting along. We argued about everything.”
“And in the middle of one of those arguments you decided to stab him?”
She yawned, as if she suddenly found the subject tiresome. “I discovered he’d been fucking my mother, which I found . . . inappropriate.”
It was far from the first revelation of intergenerational infidelity that Gurney had encountered, but it was definitely the most nonchalant. It made him wonder whether she was as corrupt as her tone suggested, or coke-addled, or lying.
She yawned again.
He decided to move on. “As you know, the trial narrative was based on the premise that Ziko was the target of a blackmail attempt. Do you know of any particular event in his past that could be the basis for that?”
“Ziko was capable of anything. He did things all the time that could come back and blow that fucking halo off his head.”
“Anything he’d be absolutely desperate to keep to himself?”
“Could be a hundred things. When he was high, nobody in the fucking world was crazier than Ziko.” She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Maybe there’s another headless body out there. You ever think of that?”
He had, but he preferred asking questions to answering them.
“Does the case of a victim being crushed to death ring any bells?”
She recoiled. “Fuck, no!”
“Where did Ziko’s money come from?”
“What do you mean?”
“A big estate in a pricey area like this can’t have been cheap. Did the money come from his drug dealing?”
She uttered a dismissive laugh. “Most of that went up his nose. Along with thousand-dollar bottles of wine. Ziko liked to drink Lafite Rothschild with takeout pizza.”
Gurney detected a nostalgic note. The good old days with crazy Ziko, before he put an end to it all by fucking her mother. Or was it by finding religion with Emma Martin?
“So where did it come from—the money for this place, the money he still has?”
“Some from the sale of his sportswear company. But mostly it was handed to him by his father. Nasty prick who wanted nothing to do with his son. Threw money at Ziko to keep him away.” She yawned again. “How much more of this shit you want to wade through? The family crap is totally boring.”
“Ever hear the name Sally Bones?”
“Yeah, at Ziko’s trial.”
“That was the only time you heard it?”
“Yeah.”
“How about the name Jingo?’
“Same. The trial.”
“Okay, Simone. That’s it. Unless there’s anything else you want to tell me.”
She sat quietly in her corner of the couch for a long minute, with those cold eyes fixed on him. When she spoke, there was ice in her voice.
“He’s guilty. Burn that into your fucking brain. He deserves to be where he is. I hope he dies there.”
26
“YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT?”
Madeleine was gazing at him across the table by the French doors, where they were having a mostly silent breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee.
“Not really, but it might help.” He put his fork down on the edge of his plate and took a moment to collect his thoughts.
“I was hoping that Slade’s ex-wife would provide some new insight into the case. Or into Slade. The fact is, she only added to the fog. She insists his reformation is a con job, and she hates him with a venom that’s hard to overstate.”
“A woman scorned?”
“Scorned and having an affair with a kid who looks about sixteen.”
“How old is she?”
“At least twice the age of her houseboy.”
“Attractive?”
“And repellent.”
“What were you expecting?”
“That she might reveal something useful. Possibly the event that was the basis for Lenny Lerman’s blackmail plot. Maybe a few objective facts about Slade’s background that would sharpen my picture of the man. She did say with particular conviction that he’s a superb liar.”
He poked at a remaining bit of egg, then put his fork down again. Beyond the glass doors, everything was white or gray or black, except for the muted red of the barn across from the now-frozen pond.
“It’s snowing again,” he said.
She finished her coffee. “So, where do you stand with the case?”
“Nowhere. I have major problems with every hypothesis.”
“Including the ‘Slade is guilty’ hypothesis?”
He nodded. Truth be told, the main source of his doubt regarding Slade’s guilt was the decapitated rabbit. But he wasn’t about to mention anything that threatening to Madeleine. “The evidence is inconsistent with Slade’s temperament. The man I visited in Attica is nothing if not cool under pressure. I don’t see him making so many incriminating mistakes—leaving that axe and pruning clipper where they could be discovered, putting one of his own camo suits on Lerman, burying the body so close to the house, dropping a cigarette butt with his DNA on it by the gravesite.”
“You’re saying he was framed?”
“It’s one way of explaining the evidence. But it raises a difficult question. Was framing Slade a way for the killer to escape responsibility for killing Lerman? Or was killing Lerman a way to set up the framing of Slade?”
Madeleine eyed him warily. “That’s the sort of question that obsesses you.”
“The answer could be crucial. If the primary goal was to kill Lerman, then that’s where we’ll find the key to this whole affair. The insurance investigator insists it was all about the insurance money. Meaning the suspects would be the victim’s beneficiaries, Sonny and Adrienne. But I just don’t see them as perps. Adrienne is a hospice worker, and she fosters homeless kittens. Sonny may be explosive enough to kill someone, but framing Slade would have required planning, not explosiveness.”
Madeleine continued watching him without comment.
“The other possibility—killing Lerman to frame Slade—has its own problems. It would require knowledge of Lerman’s blackmail plan, knowledge of when Slade would be at the lodge, and knowledge of exactly when Lerman planned to confront him. It seems like a hell of a coincidence that one of the few people to whom Lerman confided his plan would just happen to hate Ziko Slade enough to want to destroy his life and be willing to murder Lerman to do it.”
“You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought.”
“But all I can see are three possibilities. One, Slade is guilty as charged. Two, someone else killed Lerman and framed Slade to get away with it. Three, someone wanted to frame Slade and killed Lerman to do it. But there are major flaws in all three.”
“I think this would be an ideal time to put your final thoughts on paper—the pluses and minuses of the three possibilities—pass them along to Emma and let her take it from there. You’ve done enough.”
Gurney nodded vaguely.
27
YOU’VE DONE ENOUGH.
Madeleine’s comment was echoing in his mind later that morning as he sat in the den, going through the files he’d received from Marcus Thorne. He realized she had a valid point; he just wished he could pass along a possibility that had more pluses and fewer minuses. But if he were to come up with a new Lerman murder hypothesis, he needed either new facts or a new way of interpreting the ones he had. He decided to begin with the GPS map of Lerman’s trip, which showed the route Lerman had followed from his apartment in Calliope Springs to Slade’s lodge in the wilderness above Rexton.