“No.” He was tempted to ask the reason for the question but assumed he’d soon enough discover it.
“No one at all, present or past?”
“No one.” Seeing something in Dermott’s eyes that seemed to demand further assurance, he added, “Before I saw the check-mailing instructions in the letter to Mark Mellery, I didn’t even know Wycherly existed.”
“And no one ever told you about anything happening in this house?”
“Happening?”
“In this house. A long time ago.”
“No,” said Gurney, intrigued.
Dermott’s discomfort seemed to exceed the effects of a headache.
“What was it that happened?”
“It’s all secondhand information,” said Dermott, “but right after I bought this place, one of the neighbors told me that twenty-some-odd years ago there was a horrible fight here-apparently a husband and wife, and the wife was stabbed.”
“And you see some connection…?”
“It may be a coincidence, but…”
“Yes?”
“I’d pretty much forgotten about it. Until today. This morning when I found-” His lips stretched in a kind of nauseous spasm.
“Take your time,” said Gurney.
Dermott placed both his hands to his temples. “Do you have a gun?”
“I own one.”
“I mean with you.”
“No. I haven’t carried a gun since I left the NYPD. If you’re worried about security, there are more than a dozen armed cops within a hundred yards of this house,” said Gurney.
He didn’t look particularly reassured.
“You were saying you remembered something.”
Dermott nodded. “I’d forgotten all about it, but it came back to me when I saw… all that blood.”
“What came back to you?”
“The woman who was stabbed in this house-she was stabbed in the throat.”
Chapter 49
Dermott’s recollection that the neighbor (now deceased) had placed the event “twenty-some-odd years ago” meant that the number could easily be less than twenty-five-and that, in turn, would mean that both John Nardo and Gary Sissek would have been on the force at the time of the attack. Although the picture was far from clear, Gurney could feel another piece of the puzzle starting to rotate into position. He had more questions for Dermott, but they could wait until he got some answers from the lieutenant.
He left Dermott sitting stiffly in his chair by the drawn blinds, looking stressed and uncomfortable. As he started down the staircase, a female officer in scene-of-crime coveralls and latex gloves in the hallway below was asking Nardo what to do next with the areas outside the house that had been examined for trace evidence.
“Keep it taped and off-limits, in case we have to go over it again. Transport the chair, bottle, anything else you’ve got to the station. Set up the back end of the file room as a dedicated area.”
“What about all the junk on the table?”
“Shove it in Colbert’s office for now.”
“He’s not going to like it.”
“I don’t give a flying-Look, just take care of it!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Before you leave, tell Big Tommy to stay in front of the house, tell Pat to stay by the phone. I want everyone else out knocking on doors. I want to know if anyone in the neighborhood saw or heard anything out of the ordinary the past couple of days, especially late last night or early this morning-strangers, cars parked where they aren’t normally parked, anyone hanging around, anyone in a hurry, anything at all.”
“How large a radius you want them to cover?”
Nardo looked at his watch. “Whatever they can cover in the next six hours. Then we’ll decide where to go from there. Anything of interest turns up, I want to be informed immediately.”
As she went off on her mission, Nardo turned to Gurney, who was standing at the foot of the stairs. “Find out anything useful?”
“I’m not sure,” said Gurney in a low voice, motioning Nardo to follow him back into the room they’d been sitting in earlier. “Maybe you can help me figure it out.”
Gurney sat in the chair facing the doorway. Nardo stood behind the chair on the opposite side of the square table. His expression was a combination of curiosity and something Gurney couldn’t decipher.
“Are you aware that someone was once stabbed in this house?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Shortly after Dermott bought the place, he was told by a neighbor that a woman who’d lived here years ago had been attacked by her husband.”
“How many years ago?”
Gurney was sure he saw a flicker of recognition in Nardo’s eyes.
“Maybe twenty, maybe twenty-five. Somewhere in there.”
It seemed to be the answer Nardo expected. He sighed and shook his head. “I hadn’t thought about that for a long time. Yeah, there was a domestic assault-about twenty-four years ago. Not too long after I joined the force. What about it?”
“Do you remember any of the details?”
“Before we go down memory lane, you mind addressing the relevance issue?”
“The woman who was attacked was stabbed in the throat.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?” There was a twitch at the corner of Nardo’s mouth.
“Two people have been attacked in this house. Of all the ways that someone could be attacked, it strikes me as a notable coincidence that both of those people were stabbed in the throat.”
“You’re making these things sound the same by the way you say it, but they got zip in common. What the hell does a police officer murdered on a protection assignment today have to do with a domestic disturbance twenty-four freaking years ago?”
Gurney shrugged. “If I knew more about the ‘disturbance,’ maybe I could tell you.”
“Fine. Okay. I’ll tell you what I can tell you, but it’s not much.” Nardo paused, staring down at the table, or more likely into the past. “I wasn’t on duty that night.”
An obvious disclaimer, thought Gurney. Why does the story demand a disclaimer?
“So this is pretty much secondhand,” Nardo went on. “As in most domestics, the husband was drunk out of his mind, got into an altercation with his wife, apparently picked up a bottle, whacked her with it, I guess it broke, she got cut, that’s about it.”
Gurney knew damn well that wasn’t it. The only question was how to jar the rest of the story loose. One of the unwritten rules of the job was to say as little as possible, and Nardo was carefully obeying the rule. Feeling that there was no time for a subtle approach, Gurney decided to plunge head-on into the barrier.
“Lieutenant, that’s a crock of shit!” he said, looking away with disgust.
“Crock of shit?” Nardo’s voice was pitched menacingly just above a whisper.
“I’m sure what you told me is true. The problem is what’s missing.”
“Maybe what’s missing is none of your freaking business.” Nardo was still sounding tough, but some of the confidence had gone out of the belligerence.
“Look, I’m not just some nosy asshole from another jurisdiction. Gregory Dermott got a phone call this morning threatening my life. My life. If there’s any possible way what’s going on here could be connected to your so-called domestic disturbance, I goddamn well have a right to know about it.”
Nardo cleared his throat and gazed up at the ceiling as if the right words-or an emergency exit-might suddenly appear there.
Gurney added in a softer tone, “You could start by telling me the names of the people involved.”
Nardo gave a little nod, pulled out the chair he’d been standing behind, and sat down. “Jimmy and Felicity Spinks.” He sounded resigned to an unpleasant truth.
“You say the names like you knew them pretty well.”
“Yeah. Well. Anyway…” Somewhere in the house, a phone rang once. Nardo seemed not to hear it. “Anyway, Jimmy used to drink a bit. More than a bit, I guess. Came home drunk one night, got into a fight with Felicity. Like I said, he ended up cutting her pretty bad with a broken bottle. She lost a lot of blood. I didn’t see it, I was off that night, but the guys who were on the call talked about the blood for a week.” Nardo was staring at the table again.