It was no surprise that Esti Moreno would be there, but the actual sight of her gave his nerves a jab. He felt some resistance to the idea of approaching her, but he knew it had to be done. Figuring any cops assigned to the situation would be in the building, he got out of the car, turned up the collar of his jacket against the wind, and walked quickly across the parking lot.
She was in the middle of a long drag on her cigarette.
“Esti?”
She stared at him, slowly blowing out the smoke, her expression hardening.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice was hoarse, angry.
He blinked, taken aback by her tone. “I heard . . . on the radio . . . about the shooting.”
“Go away! Just leave! Now!”
Gurney took a small step backward. “I don’t understand.”
“He may not make it. He may die. You hear what I’m saying?”
“My God, Esti, I—”
She cut him off. “You dragged him into this fucking case! You did this, you fucking son of a bitch! Get away from me! Now!”
62
GURNEY RETREATED TO HIS CAR. WHERE HE JUST SAT, battered by the growing impact of Esti’s outburst.
A man he’d naively come to believe was indestructible was just as destructible as any other human being. And it was his own cajoling, his importuning, that had put him in the literal line of fire. If Hardwick should die . . .
He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, his head bowed, when he looked up and for the second time that evening saw a familiar-looking woman emerging from the hospital’s revolving door. As she made her way through the parking lot to a car a few spaces from his own, he recognized the grim face of the tow truck owner, Charlene Vesco. In the light from her open car door, he could see the tight set of her jaw, her lips pressed together in a thin, straight line. The emotion behind that expression wasn’t clear, but it looked like there was more fear in it than grief. She pulled abruptly out of her space and headed for the exit. He decided to follow her. He had no objective in mind, other than a feeling that any action was better than none.
The evening traffic made it possible to keep another car or two between them as she made her way through the outskirts of Albany in the direction of Garville. When it became clear that she was heading for her auto salvage yard, Gurney dropped farther back. He switched off his headlights, parked at the far end of the block, and watched.
Charlene opened the tall steel gate and walked toward the trailer-office. The pit bull chained to a corner of the office barked, then stopped. A minute later she led the dog, on a short leash, to the car and let him into the back seat. Then she locked the gate and got back in her car.
He tailed her with his headlights off until they reached a busy avenue, where he switched them on and resumed a position two cars behind her. He followed her to the other side of Garville, to a tree-lined suburban-looking street. Halfway along it, she pulled into a driveway next to a modest ranch-style house. As he drove past, he caught a glimpse of her entering it through a side door, the dog following her.
Continuing along the street, he noticed one parked vehicle that seemed out of place. It was hard to imagine anyone in that blue-collar neighborhood driving that hundred-thousand-dollar Range Rover, its pearl-gray finish glistening in the dim glow of a distant streetlamp. Tinted glass kept him from seeing any more than a hint of someone behind the wheel.
Until he was well out of Garville, Gurney kept checking his rearview mirror, but never saw any evidence of being followed. The unsettled feeling produced by that looming gray vehicle, however, remained with him an hour and a half later when he pulled into the quarry trail on the back side of the campsite hill.
Why had Charlene Vesco gone out of her way to bring the pit bull home with her instead of leaving it to what he presumed was its normal job of guarding the salvage yard? Was it because she didn’t intend to be at the yard the next day to feed it? Or because she thought she might need protection at home?
Protection from whom? And why?
THE SHOCKS OF the day left him without any appetite for dinner—nor, as the night wore on, any ability to fall asleep. At 2:00 a.m., he got up, slipped on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, and retreated to the den.
He got the list of Lenny Lerman’s activities in the weeks preceding his death. He focused on the visits Lerman made to the two office complexes—one to Clearview Offices Suites, followed by three to Capital District Office Park. Examining the directories of tenants in those complexes, he put together some plausible through-lines for Lerman’s four trips.
His first scenario was based on the hypothesis that the trips were related to a medical problem. In that version, Lerman’s trip to Clearview Office Suites would have been to the urgent care facility. His next trip—to the Capital District Office Park five days later—could have been for an appointment with the hematology-oncology practice. His next trip might have been to the radiological imaging group, perhaps for an MRI. And his final trip could have been back to the hematology-oncology practice to discuss the imaging results.
Gurney’s second scenario hypothesized a legal problem. In that version, Lerman’s trip to Clearview Office Suites would have been to the law firm. And that could have been followed by three consecutive visits to the criminal defense attorneys in the Capital District Office Park.
In the third scenario, Lerman’s issue concerned money. In that case, his trip to the Clearview Office Suites would have been to the financial adviser; his subsequent trips to the Capital District Office Park would have been to the stock brokerage located there.
Pondering the three scenarios, he felt that the legal version was more likely than the financial, and the medical more likely than the legal. Of course, it was possible that Lerman made his four trips for four different reasons, and that his mood changes had nothing to do with any of them. Arranging a handful of facts to form a coherent picture could satisfy one’s hunger for order at the price of losing contact with reality.
Still, the medical hypothesis was appealing. Gurney could imagine Lerman noticing some symptom of trouble . . . going to his nearby urgent care facility . . . follow-up appointments with a specialist. Suppose Lerman faced a serious medical issue. How might that news have changed him, changed his priorities? Might it have given him the reckless, nothing-to-lose attitude that the blackmail scheme seemed to require? Might it explain—
His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of a lamp being switched on in the bedroom across the hall, then the sound of Madeleine’s approaching footsteps.
“Do you realize what time it is?” she said, standing in the doorway. There was something accusatory in her tone, as though his being up had disturbed her sleep.
There was no light on in the den, and he could barely see her in the moonlight coming through the window.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
She made a sound that he took for a sarcastic laugh.
He ignored it. “Suppose Lerman was facing some medical issue, perhaps even dying. Suppose he saw the opportunity to blackmail Ziko Slade as a no-lose proposition. Suppose he imagined that getting his hands on a million dollars and passing it along to his son and daughter would make up for his failings as a father. Suppose—”
“Back up a minute! There must have been an autopsy. Wouldn’t it have revealed some medical calamity if one existed?”
“It was a forensic autopsy, not a clinical one.”
“Meaning what?”
“The purpose of a forensic autopsy is to determine if a death occurred naturally or unnaturally—and if unnaturally, by what means. If the ME determines that a victim has died as a direct result of his head being chopped off, there’s no forensic reason to search for other morbidities. Full clinical autopsies are performed when the cause of death is less clear.”