He cleared his throat. “So . . . what do you want me to do?”
“Discover the facts that prove his innocence.”
“What if the facts prove his guilt?”
She smiled slightly. “Ziko has been betrayed by a legal system more interested in securing a conviction than uncovering the truth. I’m certain that you can find the facts that will exonerate him.” She paused. “I know you’re skeptical of my insight into Ziko’s character. Let me add a more mundane observation. He’s far too intelligent to have committed such a stupid crime.”
“What was stupid about it?”
“According to the prosecutor, he was being blackmailed by Lenny Lerman over some dark secret in his past, and he killed Lerman rather than meet his financial demand.”
Gurney shrugged. “A common enough solution.”
“In general, but not in its details. According to the prosecutor, when Lerman arrived at Ziko’s estate, Ziko knocked him unconscious, dragged his body to a shallow grave he’d already prepared in a pine thicket near the lodge, chopped off his head with an axe and cut off his fingers with a pruning clipper—supposedly to impede identification of the body—covered the body with a scattering of dirt, left his fingerprints on the axe handle, left his DNA on a cigarette butt by the grave, and did every other incriminating thing imaginable. The body, with a few other parts chewed off by scavenging animals, was discovered—”
The clatter of a dropped plate in the sink drew Gurney’s attention to the open kitchen area in time to see Madeleine hurrying from the room.
Emma appeared chagrined. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have been so explicit.”
“Not your fault. The Harrow Hill business has had some lingering effects.”
“Of course. It must have traumatized you both.”
Gurney responded with a small nod. “Please continue.”
She regarded him with some concern before going on. “My point is that Ziko has the financial resources to deal with a blackmail challenge in other ways. He would never have done what the prosecutor says he did.”
“Smart people can do stupid things under pressure.”
“Suppose you planned to kill someone who was coming to visit you. Would you dig a shallow grave out by your chicken coop and bury the body under a couple of inches of dirt where coyotes and vultures were sure to find it? You would not be so foolish, David, and neither would Ziko.”
Her steady gaze remained on Gurney. There were tiny droplets of water in her hair, the glimmering remnants of melted snowflakes.
3
TWO HOURS LATER, GURNEY AND MADELEINE WERE FINISHING a taciturn dinner of fettuccine bolognese left over from the previous evening. Gurney’s conversation with Emma and Madeleine’s emotional reaction to it hung over them, a silent presence.
Eventually, Madeleine laid down her fork, nudged her plate toward the center of the table, and spoke in a conspicuously neutral tone. “What do you intend to do?”
“She wants me to reinvestigate a murder case that’s been fully adjudicated—a case so strong that the jury returned an immediate guilty verdict, despite the defendant having a top-tier defense attorney.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time you took on a challenge like that.”
“But there was always some apparent discrepancy, a crack that could be pried open. Emma’s not offering me anything like that—just her total trust in a supposedly reformed slimeball.”
“You’re very good at discovering little discrepancies that aren’t obvious at first.”
“So . . . you’re telling me I should get involved?”
“I’m not telling you that at all.”
He stared at her. “I’m confused. You invited Emma Martin here. You just said I’d be very good at doing what she wants. That sure sounds like—”
She cut him off. “I didn’t invite her. She called me out of the blue and asked if she could talk to you about a case she felt strongly about. Emma and I were close when we worked together in the city. She was a good friend. She provided guidance when I most needed it. So I couldn’t say no, Emma, you can’t come, you can’t talk to my husband. Instead, I said fine, it’ll be wonderful to see you again. But I had no idea she wanted you to jump head-first into the reinvestigation of a horrible murder.”
“If you don’t want me to do it, why are you telling me I’d be good at it?”
“Because I know what intrigues you, David. I know there’s something in you that comes to life at the challenge of uncovering something that everyone else has overlooked. And if that’s what you want to do—despite what happened here last year, despite both of us coming within an inch of being killed, despite that whole bloody nightmare I can’t get out of my head—then let’s get it out in the open.”
Gurney sighed, placed his hands on the table, and slowly turned up his palms. “The truth is, Maddie, I have no idea what I want to do. God knows, I don’t want to get sucked into something that ends up like . . .” His voice trailed off. He took a deep breath and continued, “Besides, I’m not crazy about the idea of getting involved with Emma.”
“Oh?”
“Her assertiveness can be off-putting. And she’s arrogant.”
Madeleine sighed. “She’s not arrogant. But I understand how she might seem that way to you. At the clinic, she was always at odds with the director. She made categorical statements about the mental status of clients that the director complained were unsupported by specific data. But the thing is, she was incredibly acute in her perceptions. She could see things instantly that could take other therapists a dozen sessions to get to.”
“And she was always right?”
“I never knew her to be wrong.”
“So, you’re assuming she’s right about this Slade character?”
“I’m not assuming anything.”
“Are you pushing me toward this thing or away from it?”
The lines of tension at the corners of Madeleine’s eyes had deepened. “Does it matter?”
Gurney said nothing.
“When I saw Emma out to her car, she said she’d left an envelope for you with information about the case. Looking at it might be the polite thing to do. You don’t owe her anything more.”
4
GURNEY SPENT A RESTLESS NIGHT. THE WINTRY WIND had grown stronger, seething through the trees outside the bedroom windows well into the wee hours of the morning. The shallow sleep he finally fell into just before dawn was disturbed by the recurrent nightmare he’d come to know as “the Danny dream.”
It consisted of a weird, disjointed replay of the accident, long ago, that had killed his son a week before his fourth birthday—the only child he’d had with Madeleine.
On their way to the playground on a sunny day.
Danny walking in front of him.
Following a pigeon on the sidewalk.
Gurney only partly present.
Pondering a twist in a murder case he was working on.
Distracted by a bright idea, a possible solution.
The pigeon stepping off the curb into the street.
Danny following the pigeon.
The sickening, heart-stopping thump.
Danny’s body tossed through the air, hitting the pavement, rolling.
Rolling.
The red BMW racing away.
Screeching around a corner.
Gone.
Gurney awoke in the same agony of grief the dream always produced. For twenty years, the dream had assaulted him at unpredictable intervals. The events, moment by moment, were always the same, always consistent with his memory. And the dreadful feeling in his heart was, as always, undiminished.