“So why might a murderer leave a flower by his victim?”
“What kind of flower?”
He could always trust her to make the question more specific.
“I’m not sure what it was. I know what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a rose, it wasn’t a carnation, it wasn’t a dahlia. But it was sort of similar to all of them.”
“In what way?”
“Well, the first thing I was reminded of was a rose, but it was larger, with a lot more petals, more crowded together. It was almost the size of a big carnation or a dahlia, but the individual petals were broader than dahlia or carnation petals-a bit like crinkly rose petals. It was a very busy, showy sort of flower.”
For the first time since he’d arrived home, Madeleine’s face was alive with real interest.
“Has something occurred to you?” he asked.
“Maybe… hmm…”
“What? You know what kind of flower it is?”
“I think so. It’s quite a coincidence.”
“Jesus! Are you going to tell me?”
“Unless I’m mistaken, the flower you just described sounds very much like a peony.”
The Heineken bottle slipped out of his hand. “Holy Christ!”
After asking Madeleine a few pertinent questions about peonies, he went to the den to make some calls.
Chapter 36
By the time he got off the phone, Gurney had persuaded Detective Clamm that it had to be more than coincidence that the eponymous flower of the first murder’s location had shown up at the second murder.
He also suggested that several actions be taken without delay-conduct an all-out search of the Rudden house for any odd letters or notes, anything in verse, anything handwritten, anything in red ink; alert the medical examiner’s office to the gunshot-and-broken-bottle combination used in Peony, in case they might want to take a second look at Rudden’s body; comb the house for evidence of a gunshot or material that may have been used to muffle one; re-search the property and adjoining properties and roadway between the house and the community fence for broken bottles, especially whiskey bottles; and start compiling a biographical profile of Albert Rudden to mine for potential links to Mark Mellery, conflicts or enemies, legal problems, or trouble involving alcohol.
Eventually becoming aware of the peremptory tone of his “suggestions,” he slowed down and apologized.
“I’m sorry, Randy. I’m getting out of order here. The Rudden case is all yours. You’re the man responsible, which makes the next move entirely your call. I know I’m not in charge, and I’m sorry for behaving like I am.”
“No problem. By the way, I’ve got a Lieutenant Everly down here who says he went through the academy with a Dave Gurney. Would that be you?”
Gurney laughed. He’d forgotten that Bobby Everly had ended up in that precinct. “Yeah, that would be me.”
“Well, sir, in that case I’d welcome any input from you at any time. And anytime you’d like to question Mrs. Rudden again, please be my guest. I thought you were good with her.”
If this was sarcasm, it was well concealed. Gurney decided to take it as a compliment.
“Thank you. I don’t need to talk to her directly, but let me make one small suggestion. If I happened to be face-to-face with her again, I would ask her in a very matter-of-fact way what the Lord told her to do with the whiskey bottle.”
“What whiskey bottle?”
“The one she may have removed from the scene for reasons best known to herself. I’d ask about it in a way that suggests you already know that the bottle was there and that she removed it at the Lord’s urging, and you’re just curious to know where it is. Of course, there may not have been any whiskey bottle at all, and if you get the sense that she really doesn’t have a clue what you’re talking about, just move on to something else.”
“You’re sure this whole deal is going to follow the pattern of the Peony thing-so there ought to be a whiskey bottle somewhere?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. If you don’t feel comfortable approaching her that way, that’s okay. It’s your call.”
“Might be worth a try. Not much to lose. I’ll let you know.”
“Good luck.”
The next person Gurney needed to talk to was Sheridan Kline. The truism that your boss should never find out from someone else what he should have found out from you was true-times-two in law enforcement. He reached Kline as he was en route to a regional conference of district attorneys in Lake Placid, and the frequent interruptions caused by the spotty cell-phone coverage in the upstate mountains made the “peony” connection more difficult to explain than Gurney would have liked. When he was finished, Kline took so long to respond that Gurney was afraid he’d driven into another dead transmission area.
He finally said, “This flower thing-you’re comfortable with that?”
“If it’s just a coincidence,” said Gurney, “it’s a remarkable one.”
“But it’s not really solid. If I were playing devil’s advocate here, I’d have to point out that your wife didn’t actually see the flower-the plastic flower-you were describing to her. Suppose it’s not a peony at all. Where are we then? Even if it is a peony, it’s not exactly proof of anything. God knows it’s not the kind of breakthrough I could stand up and talk about at a press conference. Christ, why couldn’t it be a real flower, so there’d be less doubt about what it was? Why plastic?”
“That bothered me, too,” said Gurney, trying to conceal his irritation at Kline’s reaction. “Why not a real one? A few minutes ago, I asked my wife about it, and she told me that florists don’t like to sell peonies. It has a top-heavy bloom that won’t remain upright on its stem. They’re available in nurseries for planting, but not at this time of year. So a plastic one might be the only way he could send us his little message. I’m thinking it was an opportunistic thing-he saw it in a store and was struck by the idea, by the playfulness of it.”
“Playfulness?”
“He’s taunting us, testing us, playing a game with us. Remember the note he left on Mellery’s body-come and get me if you can. That’s what the backwards footprints were all about. This maniac is dangling messages in front of our faces, and they all say the same thing: ‘Chase me, chase me, betcha can’t catch me!’”
“Okay, I get it, I see what you’re saying. You may be right. But there’s no way I can publicly connect these cases based on one guy’s guess about the meaning of a plastic flower. Get me something real-ASAP.”
After he hung up the phone, Gurney sat by the den window gazing out at the late-afternoon gloom. Suppose, as Kline had conjectured, the flower wasn’t a peony after all. Gurney was shocked to realize how fragile his new “link” was-and how much confidence he’d had in it. Overlooking the glaring flaw in a theory was a sure sign of excessive emotional attachment to it. How many times had he made that point to the criminology students in the course he taught at the state university, and here he was blundering into the same trap. It was depressing.
The dead ends of the day ran around in his head in a fatiguing loop for maybe half an hour, maybe longer.
“Why are you sitting in there in the dark?”
He swiveled in his chair and saw Madeleine silhouetted in the doorway.
“Kline wants connections more tangible than a debatable peony,” he said. “I gave the Bronx guy a few places to look. Hopefully he’ll come up with something.”
“You sound doubtful.”
“Well, on the one hand, we have the peony, or at least what we think is a peony. On the other hand, we have the difficulty of imagining the Ruddens and the Mellerys being connected to each other in any way. If ever there were people who lived in different worlds…”