“That would be my guess.”
The fear in her eyes increased. “What if I’d refused to go?”
“Not worth thinking about.”
“Good lord. Alright, I’ll see how much I can remember about him.” She turned and went into the house.
As Gurney followed the motorcycle tracks into the woods, he wondered how long he could avoid revealing his own position in the affair. He’d led Tess Larson to believe he was part of the official police team. He wasn’t comfortable with the deception, but there were moments in any investigation when expediency trumped openness.
The clear tread impressions made the route easy to follow. It extended from the campground nearly all the way up to the site of the ramming. Since the destination was far out of sight from the starting point, he concluded that the rider must have been following a route programmed into an off-road GPS. Interesting, but no big surprise. It was already obvious that everything about the attack had been carefully planned. The tread marks stopped short of the roadside, at a point in the woods where the motorcycle would have escaped the notice of any motorist who happened to be passing.
From the few remnants of yellow crime scene tape, Gurney got a sense of the area that had been cordoned off by the police. It consisted of a rough circle with a radius of forty or fifty feet, centered on the point of the collision. He noted it failed to extend far enough into the woods to encompass any evidence of the motorcycle’s presence—an omission that would create a major blind spot in the BCI investigation.
He took out his phone and photographed the tire marks, adding wide-angle shots to locate them within the overall scene. He walked back down through the woods to the campground and completed his photo inventory with shots of the tire tracks left by the truck.
He had a responsibility to make the photos available to the state police or at least to inform them of the presence of the tire tracks, along with Tess Larson’s story of what had transpired with her elusive visitor, but he was reluctant to do so before initiating an inquiry of his own, with the help of Kyra Barstow.
He was composing a text to accompany the photos he planned to send to her when Tess Larson emerged from the house and handed him three pencil sketches. One was of a man’s face, one of a pickup truck, one of a motorcycle. She shrugged apologetically. “I’m lousy at describing things in words. I’m better at drawing.”
“These are great,” he said. “Is there anything you remember about this ‘Jim Brown’ character that wouldn’t show up in your drawing?”
She frowned in concentration. “One thing, maybe. Most men tend to minimize their physical problems, especially pain, especially in the presence of a woman. In fact, I get the feeling that’s what you’re doing right now, probably without even thinking about it. The cautious way you move tells me you’re probably a lot more uncomfortable than you’re letting on. But with him, I think it was the opposite—like he wanted to appear to be in pain. I didn’t think about it at the time, but now, when I picture that strained look on his face, that’s what comes to mind.”
“You think he was manipulating you?”
“Yes. And it makes me feel like an idiot.”
37
WHEN HE GOT BACK UP TO HIS CAR, GURNEY SENT PHOTOS of the sketches Tess had given him and the tire treads to Kyra Barstow. Since the investigation of Sonny’s murder fell within the jurisdiction of the NYSP and their own forensic department, Barstow had no official connection to it. He was relying on her natural curiosity, just as he had with the beheaded rabbit.
In this case, he was asking her to access a comprehensive tread database, ID the tires, link them to the various vehicles on which they would have been installed as original equipment, and see if Tess’s truck and motorcycle sketches matched any of the possibilities. As for the sketch of the man who called himself Jim Brown, Gurney didn’t expect anything concrete from Barstow. But since the face in the sketch likely belonged to the shooter or to an accomplice, it added an element of interest.
His next stop was the Beer Monster in Calliope Springs to talk to Thomas Cazo, Lenny Lerman’s former employer. He found it mentally jarring to change focus from the son’s murder to the father’s. But it also felt appropriate, since he was increasingly certain the two murders were connected.
Because he had to pass through Walnut Crossing en route to Calliope Springs, he decided to stop at the house and pick up the transcript of Scott Derlick’s interview with Cazo. Having the transcript of a BCI interview in hand would convey an official connection. Deceiving Cazo that way troubled him less than deceiving Tess Larson.
Halfway between Blackmore Mountain and Walnut Crossing, the crazy Catskill weather shifted. The cobalt sky disappeared behind a gray cloud mass, and by the time he parked by the asparagus patch there were snowflakes in the air. The chickens were standing perfectly still in the run, as if attentive to the altered atmosphere. Gurney hurried into the house, ferreted out the Cazo transcript from the files on his desk, got back in the car, and resumed his drive to Calliope Springs.
By the time he pulled into the parking lot in front of the aggressively plain Beer Monster building, the ever-changing sky had darkened, the breezes had become gusts, and the snowflakes were more numerous. The windowless concrete-block structure looked more like an industrial warehouse than a retail store. It wouldn’t be the first business, thought Gurney, to rely on rock-bottom aesthetics to suggest rock-bottom prices.
Its strip-mall environment was hardly any cheerier. The adjoining enterprise was a lawn-and-garden nursery, closed for the season. Empty metal racks and stacked wooden pallets were surrounded by a chain-link fence, giving the place the look of an abandoned detention center.
With the transcript in his jacket pocket, Gurney got out of the car and headed for the Beer Monster’s plain metal entry door. It reminded him of the doors on adult video shops.
The inside of the place reflected the same no-frills philosophy as the outside. Workers pushed hand-trucks, piled with cases of beer, through aisles that ran between tall steel shelving. Customers pushed oversized supermarket wagons, loaded with six-packs and twelve-packs. The dusty-smelling air had a sour edge. Cold, shadowless light emanated from banks of fluorescent fixtures hanging from the steelwork that supported the high ceiling. There was a steady low rumble coming from vibrations in the heating system.
It struck Gurney as a hellish place to work. If Lenny Lerman had come upon a means of escaping from this to an imagined life of ease and wealth, however perilous the route, the temptation might well have been irresistible.
As a hand-truck worker was passing by, Gurney asked him where he could find Cazo. Without stopping, the man pointed to a glassed-in office at the rear of the center aisle. When Gurney reached it, he recognized Cazo’s stony features and thick-set body from the trial video. He silenced his phone and knocked on the door.
After regarding him for a long moment through the glass, Cazo pushed a button on the side of his desk. The door’s lock clicked open. Gurney entered the office, which reeked of cigar smoke, and introduced himself as an investigator following up on some loose ends related to the Slade murder trial. Apart from a slight tightening of his lips, the man showed little reaction. The hostility in his small dark eyes had a chronic look.
Gurney took the transcript out of his pocket. “According to this record of your interview with Detective Scott Derlick, when he questioned you regarding Lenny Lerman’s state of mind, you stated that his attitude and behavior had changed a month or so prior to his resignation.”