Later that morning, as he was sitting at the breakfast table, gazing cautiously down toward the watchers’ car by the barn, Madeleine announced that she and Gerry would be joining the string group in the afternoon for a concert at the Oneonta nursing home.
“I thought you only did concerts there on Sundays,” he said, as though he found her departure from custom problematical.
She raised an eyebrow. “Today is Sunday.”
He responded only with a blink and a small grunt of recognition, but he was bothered by this evidence of his scattered state of mind more than he was willing to admit. Mental acuity, after all, wasn’t just his claim to fame, it was his identity.
Hours later, after Madeleine left for the concert, Gurney felt his anxious exhaustion finally morphing into a gentle doziness. He was wary, however, of falling into a deep sleep alone in the house, lest the security system alert on his phone fail to wake him in the face of an approaching police raid. After weighing the options, he strapped on his Glock, slipped into his jacket, and headed for his campsite.
HE AWOKE IN the cold darkness of his tent to the yipping of coyotes. His phone told him it was 9:35 p.m. The pain in his head and shoulder came back to life as he crawled out of his sleeping bag and got to his feet. The pain faded to a dull aching as he made his way by moonlight down the hill and across the back field to the house.
All the lights were out, which told him that Madeleine was either in bed or hadn’t come home yet. He knocked softly on the bedroom window, waited, and tried again. He heard movement inside. A flashlight was switched on. Coming closer, the beam was directed out at him, briefly blinding him. Then the flashlight was extinguished, the window sash was raised, and he climbed through the opening. By the time he was standing inside and had closed the window behind him, Madeleine was already back in bed.
She said nothing.
Neither did he.
He felt a new wave of exhaustion overtaking him. He removed his clothes, put his Glock and phone on the nightstand, got into bed, and fell immediately into a deep, restorative sleep.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Gurney awoke feeling a lot more like his normal self. Part of that normality was the presence of a plan.
The plan was to compare the dates of Lerman’s non-routine trips not only to the dates of his mood changes, but to the dates of the events in his diary and the dates of the calls from the anonymous phone.
As soon as he got dressed, he went straight to his desk in the den. He recalled that Thomas Cazo claimed Lerman appeared depressed for a period of about a month, then regained his bragging personality a week or so before quitting his job. That time frame corresponded with Adrienne’s recollection of the same period. Apparently Lerman descended into his bleak mood toward the end of September but was reenergized at the end of October.
Gurney created a list of the trips Lerman had made to places other than his habitual destinations. He also included on the list the four-hour blackout of Lerman’s GPS locator, the calls Lerman received from the anonymous phone, and his diary entries.
As he was arranging everything in chronological order, he thought of an additional date that might be meaningful. He took out his phone and called Howard Manx of NorthGuard Insurance.
The man answered immediately and brusquely. “Manx.”
“This is Dave Gurney, still working on the Lerman-Slade murder—”
Manx interrupted. “You found anything useful to me?”
“Nothing that you can use to claw back the insurance payout, if that’s what you mean. But I’m convinced that the official version is wrong.”
“Good. What do you want?”
“I’m trying to put some key events in order. Can you give me the date Lenny Lerman applied for his million-dollar policy?”
“Hold on.”
Sound of keys tapping. Manx sniffling, coughing, clearing his throat. More keys tapping.
“October 20 application date. Effective date October 30. That tell you anything?”
“If it turns out to be significant, you’ll be the first to know.”
Gurney added the two dates to his list and printed out a hard copy.
Lerman’s visit to Clearview Office Suites:September 07
First visit to the Capital District Office Park:September 12
Second visit to the Capital District Office Park:September 25
Third visit to the Capital District Office Park:September 27
Start of his depression:End of September
Trip to the Franciscan Sanctuary:October 10
Four-hour disconnection of his phone’s GPS locator:October 19
Insurance application:October 20
First call from the anonymous phone:October 23
Lerman learns Slade’s secret from “Jingo”:October 24
Lerman decides on $1MM extortion amount:October 27
Emergence from depression:End of October
Second call from the anonymous phone:November 02
Dinner with Adrienne and Sonny:November 02
Third call from the anonymous phone:November 05
Lerman’s first call to Slade:November 05
Lerman quits Beer Monster job:November 06
Fourth call from the anonymous phone:November 12
Lerman gives Slade 10 days to get $1MM:November 13
Fifth call from the anonymous phone:November 22
Lerman’s final call to Slade:November 23
Lerman’s trip to Slade’s lodge:November 23
Gurney made his way slowly through the list, weighing the possible meanings of the time relationships. He was well aware of the mind’s tendency to leap from temporal association to causality in order to create coherence. It would be easy to assume that Lerman’s visits to the Capital District Office Park had caused his depression, and that his plan to blackmail Slade had ended it. That might be true, but the devil was in the details, and the details were unknown.
Just as intriguing were those calls Lerman received from an anonymous phone and their proximity to certain events described in his diary. One explanation would be that Lerman was receiving instructions from a collaborator.
Perhaps the collaborator was the “Jingo” that Lerman named in his diary as the source of his information about Slade. But why was there no further mention of him? And why no mention at all of the anonymous phone calls?
Gurney wondered if Lerman’s failure to mention those calls was related to another omission—the four-hour disconnection of his phone’s GPS locator.
“Are you watching the time?”
Madeleine was standing in the den doorway, dressed for work, her voice more critical than curious.
“The time?”
“For your neurology appointment.”
LANSON-CLAVIN NEUROLOGY ASSOCIATES was on the top floor of a colorless four-story building in Albany. The mostly glass structure was set on pillars above a parking lot.
Dr. Lyn Clavin was a pale, thin-boned woman with straight brown hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. A white lab coat added to her chilly image. She walked into the small examining room with a blue file folder in her hand and, without acknowledging Gurney, sat at a small metal desk with her back to him, opened the folder, and began scanning through it.
Finally, she swiveled around and faced him, flashing a perfunctory smile that left so little trace he wondered if he’d imagined it. She looked down at the folder in her lap.
“David Gurney?”
“Yes.”
“Date of birth?”
He gave it to her, adopting her clipped tone.
“The purpose of your visit today?”