Since they appeared to be focused on his potential arrival by way of the road, he figured it would now be safe for him to return to the house via the back field and one of the bedroom windows. He put the propane heater and the sleeping bag inside the tent, zipped up the entry flap, and made his way down the hill.
52
STANDING AT THE SINK ISLAND, DEFROSTING HIS ACHING hands under a stream of lukewarm water, Gurney glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was just a few minutes past three, although the wintry gray light at the windows made it feel later. Snowflakes drifted down through still, cold air. An afternoon like this cried out for a fire, but the chance that the watchers by the barn might notice smoke coming from the chimney made that unwise. A similar concern stood in the way of turning on any lights. The big room was so depressingly dim he’d almost missed the terse note from Madeleine on the refrigerator door, reminding him that she was sharing a shift with Gerry at the Crisis Center.
As his hands began to feel normal, he became more aware of the dull headache that never completely disappeared. He dried his hands and turned his attention to preparing for his next encounter with Cam Stryker. His best defense, his only defense, depended on solid information. Maybe Hardwick had discovered something new since their last conversation. He took his phone into the den and made the call.
It was answered by Esti Moreno, her light Puerto Rican accent sounding less charming than usual. “Jack is busy. He’ll call you back, okay?”
“I won’t take much of his time, just a couple of quick—”
“He’s in the middle of weatherstripping.”
“Sorry?”
“On a day like this, we get a cold wind through the house. I’m telling him again and again, the bedroom is not a refrigerator. In the bed I should not be freezing my butt off. Old houses are terrible. Like being outside.”
“So, Jack is putting weatherstripping tape—”
“Everywhere. He has to insulate around the windows, the doors, everywhere. I don’t want to stop him. Not now.”
When Gurney was about to give up, he heard Hardwick’s voice in the background. It was followed by Esti’s, sounding as though she were muffling the phone. “It’s Gurney. You can finish what you’re doing and call him back later.”
Hardwick’s voice, coming closer: “I’ll talk to him now.”
Gurney heard the phone being laid down, none too gently, then Esti’s voice, petulant, receding into the distance. “Whatever I want, something you want comes first.”
Then Hardwick’s rough voice. “Yeah?”
“Bad time, Jack?”
“What do you want?”
“Were you able to get answers to my last batch of questions?”
“You still riding that horse?”
“No way to get off. Not with what happened yesterday.” Gurney went on to relate the snake episode, adding, “This is not something I can walk away from.”
“You’re hoping it’ll make Stryker think twice about Slade?”
“It ought to. Stands to reason he didn’t send me that thing from Attica.”
That generated a guttural laugh. “Stands to reason is a nice concept, Davey-boy, but it won’t mean shit to Stryker.”
“Thanks for your optimism. Did your guy at BCI answer any of my questions?”
“Seems like my guy is no longer my guy. Got a message from him, telling me to fuck off. Won’t return my calls.”
“So, we’re at a dead end, information-wise?”
Hardwick sighed. “God knows why the fuck I bothered, but I called an old contact at DMV headquarters in Albany. I did her a favor back in the day, so she owed me one.”
“And?”
“First, she ran Bruno Lanka’s and Charlene Vesco’s names through the state DMV files to see if either of them owned a Ford 150 or a Moto Guzzi. Nothing. But she did find a Cadillac Escalade registered to Lanka, with the plate number you took down in Garville.”
“Hardly a surprise.”
“She also ran a vehicle search for all Ford 150s and Moto Guzzis registered in Albany County. Shitload of 150s. Only a handful of Guzzis—but the name of one of the Guzzi owners caught her eye. Vesco. Dominick Vesco. It didn’t show up on her first search, because that was for vehicles owned by Charlene Vesco. So then she ran a targeted search on Dominick and discovered that he also owns a Ford 150.”
“Did you get his address? Or a scan of his driver’s license photo?”
“Yes to the address, no to the photo.” He spelled out the Garville address.
After making a note of it on the cover of one of the file folders on his desk, Gurney thanked him. “This is huge, Jack. The pieces are starting to connect.”
Hardwick made a sucking noise through his teeth that conveyed his normal skepticism and then some. “Huge? You mean, the fact that someone by the name of Vesco owns the tow truck and someone else by the name of Vesco owns a pickup and motorcycle like the ones that were on Blackmore Mountain that day?”
“That’s a pretty significant fact.”
“But what the hell does it mean? That the Vesco family had it in for Sonny Lerman? And they concocted a scheme to kill him and incriminate you? What the fuck for? And what’s it got to do with Bruno Lanka—who you keep saying is part of all this?”
“It’s an interesting coincidence that Lanka is a butcher, or used to be one, according to the photo over the meat counter in his store.”
“Coincidence? The fuck are you talking about?”
“Something in the medical examiner’s autopsy report. Describing Lenny Lerman’s decapitation, he said that it had been performed with great precision—by someone who knew what he was doing. I can think of two possibilities—a surgeon or a butcher.”
“Like if we find a guy with a nail through his head, a carpenter should be our prime suspect?”
The comment struck Gurney as a sign of Hardwick’s growing hostility toward the investigation. He wished him luck with his weatherstripping project and ended the call.
He sat for some time staring bleakly out the den window, slowly rotating his shoulders, trying to alleviate a pain that was spreading from the back of his head down his back. With his growing estrangement from local law enforcement, with Hardwick in retreat from the case, and with Madeleine pressuring him to drop it, he was feeling very much alone.
The snow was falling more heavily now from a low, slaty sky. The white expanse of the high pasture was broken only by the gray-brown stalks of dead goldenrod. It was then that he became aware of a small voice within him, faint but insistent.
Do something. Do anything. Do it now.
He picked up his phone and placed a call to Cam Stryker.
She answered immediately.
“David?”
“Yes.”
“Are you alright?”
“I’m calling to give you some information.”
“We agreed to handle that face-to-face.”
“Just listen to what I have to say. It’s more important than—”
She cut him off. “This is not how this matter should be—”
Now he cut her off. “This is about Sonny Lerman’s murder. You need to hear it now. At our last meeting, I passed along Tess Larson’s account of the man who appeared at her campground the day of the shooting. I also gave you her sketches of him, his pickup truck, and his motorcycle, along with photos of both vehicles’ tire tread impressions. As I’m sure you’ve learned by now, those tread impressions and sketches ID the pickup as a Ford 150 and the off-road motorcycle as a Moto Guzzi.”