Hardwick let out an exasperated sigh. “So, what’s your plan? Tie them up and threaten to cut their balls off if they don’t ID the boss?”
“Something like that.”
“And you want me to bring a sharp knife?”
“Something like that.”
Hardwick let out an ugly little laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“I keep thinking about a cartoon I saw. Guy in his yard with a shovel. There’s a little pointy thing sticking out of the ground. He’s trying to dig it out. But the cartoon shows this deep underground view, below the guy’s lawn, and we see that the little pointy thing is the top inch of a spike on the back of a live brontosaurus that’s twice the size of the guy’s house.”
“Cute,” said Gurney.
“But you’re hell-bent on digging that fucker up, right?”
“Right.”
“Even if Lanka and Vesco are just two spikes on the back of a monster?”
“Right.”
“You have a specific time in mind for this lunatic excursion?”
“Where are you right now?”
“Right now I’m in Home Depot buying putty for the loose window panes I promised Esti I’d fix today. So, right now is not good.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Possible.”
“Good. Let’s meet a little before noon in the parking lot next to Lanka’s store. Last time I was on that street, I saw Vesco arriving in Lanka’s Escalade around that time, and I’m thinking Lanka was probably with him. Opening time at the store is noon, so one or both of them is likely to be there.”
Hardwick grunted. “And sometime between now and then you’ll figure out what the fuck our approach is?”
“We can nail that down in the parking lot.”
“Fine. But this is it, Sherlock. It’s the last fucking time I want to go near this case. It gives me the fucking creeps.”
THE SUN HAD set by the time Gurney made his way from the car’s hiding place up the slippery trail to his hilltop campsite, leaving a blood-red glow in the western sky. Darkness was closing in, the temperature was dropping, and his face was numb from the cold.
As he was starting down toward the house, he heard the distant sound of tires crunching the gravel on the town road. He reversed course, climbing back up to the place in the hemlocks that gave him the best view of the property. As the security camera alert sounded on his phone, a pair of headlights appeared at the corner of the barn, accompanied a moment later by a second pair. The barn reflected enough light for him to recognize the two vehicles as state police cruisers, then dimly make out an individual approaching the side of one of the cruisers and leaning down toward the driver’s window.
Gurney assumed this was one of the watchers, and that their car was now on the opposite side of the barn, where it couldn’t be seen from the house. Whatever he might have told the troopers about there being no sightings of Gurney returning to the property didn’t deter them. The two cruisers proceeded past the barn and up the pasture lane to the house.
A trooper emerged from each cruiser, flashlight in hand. They made their way in opposite directions around the house, rapping on doors, aiming their lights through the windows, setting off another phone alert when they passed the cameras on the far side of the house. They even looked into the chicken coop and the attached shed before conferring briefly and departing the way they came.
After listening to the sound of the cruisers receding on the town road, Gurney made his way down the hill, across the back field, and into the house through the unlocked bedroom window.
The lights in the house were off, and he left them that way. In the near-darkness, he assembled a makeshift dinner of bread, cheese, and leftover vegetable soup. When he brought these things into the den to eat in the minimal illumination provided by his laptop screen, he noticed the landline phone blinking.
He pushed the Play button and was surprised to hear Madeleine’s voice.
“I won’t be home tonight. I’m having dinner again with Gerry, then we’re going to the Harbane theater for the Coriander Chamber Group. Since we’re both on the early shift tomorrow, I’ll be staying at her house. I’ll be home after work tomorrow.”
Gurney was troubled by the fact that she’d called the landline rather than his cellphone. She’d called the house phone at a time when she knew he’d be out of the house, which meant that she didn’t want to talk to him. The move felt like more than a petty bit of evasiveness; it felt like a symptom of a deeper estrangement, and that was something he didn’t want to think about.
Sitting there at his desk, eating his dinner in the dim light of his laptop, he forced his attention onto the task of coming up with a plan for the following day’s confrontation at Lanka’s Specialty Foods. So much would depend on the circumstances and chemistry of the moment he soon realized that devising a detailed plan was impractical. In fact, he began to wonder if the whole idea of pursuing information via confrontation made any sense at all.
Still, Lanka and Vesco were the only links he had between the Lerman murders and whoever orchestrated them. And he was acutely aware that his time was limited. Powerful forces on both sides of the legal line were eager to stop him; their efforts, already disconcerting, were bound to become more intense. His only hope was to uncover the truth before Stryker’s cops caught up with him or he became the third victim. So, confrontation it would have to be. Realizing that any further thought on this subject would be a waste of time, he headed for bed.
He was awakened shortly after dawn by an urgent series of beeps on the security app on his phone. He stumbled out of bed and half ran to the kitchen. Peering out the window, he saw one of the watchers’ unmarked sedans. After it came to a stop, he could see the exhaust still billowing up into the frigid air. They were settling in for another long stakeout and letting the engine run to keep the heater working.
He took a fast shower, got dressed, strapped on his Glock, and returned to the kitchen. Keeping an eye on the watchers’ car, he made himself a generous breakfast—half a dozen slices of bacon, three eggs, two slices of toast, and a coffee.
After finishing it all, he went into the den, now brightened by the morning sunlight, opened his laptop, and found his list of the key events in the last thirteen weeks of Lenny’s life. Then he placed a call to Adrienne.
As usual, she answered quickly, sounding anxious and curious.
He gave her the date of Lenny’s visit to the Clearview Office Suites in Gorse and the dates his three subsequent visits to the Capital District Office Park in Ploverton. “Do you know of any reason why your father would have made these trips on these dates?”
“None of those dates mean anything to me,” she said, her anxiety and curiosity rising. “Do you know who he went to see?”
“I don’t. The tenants are a pretty varied lot. The thing is, his depression began around the time of those visits, so they may be significant.”
“What kind of tenants do those places have?”
Gurney checked his laptop. “Lawyers, doctors, engineers, a sleep-disorder clinic, financial adviser, stock broker, and some real estate people.”
“A sleep-disorder clinic?”
“Yes.”
“That might be it. He used to complain about waking up from nightmares. For most people sleep is a natural escape, among other good things. But not for him.”
She made a little sound like a stifled sob.
“Are you alright, Adrienne?”
“It’s just . . . sometimes I see the sadness of my father’s life so vividly it makes me cry.”
There was a long silence, broken by Gurney.
“Another trip your father made got my attention. One day in the middle of October he spent two hours at the Franciscan Sanctuary. Was that something he did from time to time?”