“No. Why?”
“The light in the back room was on again.”
“Again?”
“A few days ago, I noticed it was on. I went in and turned it off. Then, this evening when I got home, it was on again.”
“Are you saying that someone is sneaking into our barn and using the back room for something?”
“Or just turning the light on and leaving it that way.”
“What on earth for?”
“Maybe to create exactly this sort of confusion.”
“What sort of lunatic . . . ?” Her voice trailed off, her eyes registering the possibilities. “You think it’s connected to your investigation?”
“It’s possible.”
She took a slow breath, her lips tightening. “I want a gun.”
“There’s a shotgun in the upstairs hall closet.”
“I’d like to have another one for downstairs.”
“I thought you hated guns.”
“Not as much as I hate feeling threatened. I’ve had to move out of this house before, for fear of some homicidal madman you were playing cat-and-mouse with, but I’m not being driven out again. You understand?”
DINNER WAS A silent affair. Long after Madeleine cleared the dishes, Gurney remained at the table, trying to decide how to tell Cam Stryker what he’d learned from Nora Rumsten and Tess Larson without revealing the extent to which he had ignored her warning to stay away from the case.
His thoughts were interrupted by a call from Hardwick.
“Hello, Jack. You have news for me?”
“I do. If you want to know what it is, you can buy me breakfast tomorrow.”
“You want to give me a hint?”
“The phrase would be ‘toxic clusterfuck.’ Everyone working on the Sonny Lerman case has their own personal objectives, and your best interests are not on anyone’s top ten list. You want to know more, be at Dick and Della’s Diner at 8:00 a.m. By the way, I saw a promo for that bullshit RAM-TV show, Controversial Perspectives. It’s streaming live on their website at eight o’clock tonight. Those fuckers are taking a big interest in your connections to the dead Lermans. You might want to give it a look. Sweet dreams, Sherlock.”
When he looked up from his phone, he saw Madeleine watching him from the sink island.
“Hardwick?” she said.
He nodded.
“And?”
“He’s managed to extract some information about the Blackmore investigation. He wants to discuss it at breakfast. In the meantime, he suggested I watch a RAM-TV show tonight at eight o’clock.”
Madeleine pointed at the antique Regulator clock on the kitchen wall. It was 7:45 p.m.
Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting in the den in front of Gurney’s open laptop. On the screen the red and blue RAM logo exploded, the spinning shards of color flying back together to form the words CONTROVERSIAL PERSPECTIVES. Underscored by a driving drumbeat, a subtitle marched across the screen: TOUGH QUESTIONS—SHOCKING ANSWERS. Those words in turn flew off the screen, revealing the stage set of a typical TV news program. Two desks were set at a forty-five degree angle to each other, allowing the co-anchors to turn easily from the camera to each other.
A name plaque in front of the anchor on the left identified her as Tarla Hackett. A carefully constructed coif, makeup-enhanced facial contours, and predatory eyes a bit too small for her other features created the impression of a beauty-contest winner morphing into a weasel. The name plaque in front of the anchor on the right identified him as Jordan Lake. With an up-to-the-minute haircut and eyes gleaming with a shallow intensity, he reminded Gurney of a bachelor contestant on a reality show.
As the camera moved in on both anchors, he was the first to speak. “Good evening! I’m Jordan Lake.”
“And I’m Tarla Hackett. Tonight on Controversial Perspectives we’ll be taking a look at some disturbing events. What are we leading off with, Jordan?”
“At the top of my list, Tarla, is the Blackmore Mountain mystery.” He turned to the camera. “At first, it looked like just another road-rage tragedy—flaring tempers leading to a collision between two vehicles, followed by a fatal shooting.”
“It barely made the local news,” interjected Hackett. “But now I gather there may be more to it.”
“A lot more. It turns out that the two drivers weren’t your typical road-rage strangers. We discovered that earlier in the week they had an argument on a street in Winston, an argument that included serious threats.”
“Wow—that definitely gives it another dimension.”
“The man who was murdered on Blackmore Mountain was Sonny Lerman. His father, Lenny Lerman, was murdered one year earlier, almost to the day. And get this—the driver involved in the incident with Sonny is retired NYPD detective David Gurney, who’s been looking into the year-old murder of Sonny’s father. Our sources tell us he’s been trying to get Ziko Slade, the celebrity drug dealer convicted of killing Lenny Lerman, out of prison.”
Tarla Hackett’s expression tightened with disapproval. “Sounds like too many coincidences involving this retired detective.”
Jordan Lake nodded. “Too many coincidences, and too many unanswered questions. Starting with, why hasn’t Gurney been arrested and charged? When only two people are present and one of them is shot dead, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who the shooter was. Besides, we’ve been told that the murder weapon has Gurney’s prints on it.”
“But they haven’t brought him in. So, what the heck is going on?”
“That’s what we keep asking, Tarla. The state police keep referring us to the DA’s office, and the DA’s office keeps giving us their standard ‘ongoing investigation’ brush-off.”
“Meanwhile Gurney is free as a bird. Any idea what his secret power is?”
“A smart detective can accumulate a lot of dirt on a lot of people. And a lot of dirt can provide a lot of leverage.”
“Enough leverage to avoid a murder charge?”
“Who knows, Tarla? But that’s a real possibility.”
“Sounds like this could be shaping up to be the political scandal of the year. We’ll be back in just a minute with some wise words from RAM’s legal analyst, Maldon Albright. But first, these important announcements.”
Madeleine sat glaring at the screen, her arms folded.
After a commercial touting investment opportunities that required immediate action, Lake and Hackett were back on the screen, reprising their furrowed-brow expressions of indignation at cover-ups in high places.
Hackett spoke first. “In just a moment we’ll be moving along to tonight’s other high-octane story, scalp cancer—the secret killer. Why is the medical establishment refusing to talk about it? But now, a final comment on the Blackmore shooting from our renowned legal and political analyst, Maldon Albright.”
The video cut to a split-screen view of Hackett on one side and a fleshy-faced man who struck Gurney as an aging Ivy League frat boy on the other.
Hackett was sporting the envious smile of a climber gazing up the corporate ladder. “We appreciate your joining us, Maldon. Any insights into this baffling affair?”
Albright spoke with aristocratic disdain. “The stench of a cover-up is overwhelming. This Gurney character appears to be the missing link between the two Lerman murders, but his exact role is yet to be determined. We can safely predict that the mainstream media will prove worse than blind, and it will be up to RAM-TV to ferret out the facts and present them to America, without fear or favor. It promises to be an exciting ride.”
Albright disappeared, and the video cut back Hackett and Lake at their angled desks.
“Please,” cried Madeleine, “turn those idiots off!”