He turned quickly toward the open doorway. But Gregory Dermott was already standing in it, with a quart bottle of Four Roses whiskey in one hand and a.38 Special revolver in the other. There was no trace of the angry, volatile man with a migraine. The eyes, no longer screwed up into an imitation of pain and accusation, had reverted to what, Gurney assumed, was their normal state-the right keen and determined, the left dark and unfeeling as lead.
Nardo also turned. “Wha…?” he began, then let the question die in his throat. He stood very still, eyeing Dermott’s face and gun alternately.
Dermott took a full step into the room, adroitly reached back with his foot, and hooked his toe around the edge of the door, slamming it shut behind him. There was a heavy metallic click as the lock snapped into place. A small, unsettling smile lengthened the thin line of his mouth.
“Alone at last,” he said, mocking the tone of a man looking forward to a pleasant chat. “So much to do,” he added. “So little time.” He apparently found this amusing. The cold smile widened for a moment like a stretching worm, then contracted. “I want you to know in advance how much I appreciate your participation in my little project. Your cooperation will make everything so much better. First, a minor detail. Lieutenant, may I ask you to lie facedown on the floor?” It wasn’t really a question.
Gurney could read in Nardo’s eyes a kind of rapid calculation, but he couldn’t tell what options the man was considering. Or even if he had any idea what was really going on.
To the degree that he could read anything in Dermott’s eyes, it looked like the patience of a cat watching a mouse with nowhere to run.
“Sir,” said Nardo, affecting a kind of pained concern, “it would be a real good idea to put the gun down.”
Dermott shook his head. “Not as good as you think.”
Nardo looked baffled. “Just put it down, sir.”
“That’s an option. But there’s a complication. Nothing in life is simple, is it?”
“Complication?” Nardo was speaking to Dermott as though he were an otherwise harmless citizen temporarily off his medication.
“I plan to put down the gun after I shoot you. If you want me to put it down right away, then I’ll have to shoot you right away. I don’t want to do that, and I’m sure you don’t want that, either. You see the problem?”
As Dermott spoke, he raised the revolver to a point at which it was aimed at Nardo’s throat. Whether it was the steadiness of his hand or the calm mockery in Dermott’s voice, something in his manner convinced Nardo he needed to try a different strategy.
“You fire that gun,” he said, “what do you think happens next?”
Dermott shrugged, the thin line of his mouth widening again. “You die.”
Nardo nodded in tentative agreement, as though a student had given him an obvious but incomplete answer. “And? What then?”
“What difference does it make?” Dermott shrugged again, gazing down the barrel at Nardo’s neck.
The lieutenant seemed to be making quite an effort at maintaining control, over either his fury or his fear.
“Not much to me, but a lot to you. You pull that trigger, in less than a minute you’ll have a couple dozen cops up your ass. They’ll fucking rip you to pieces.”
Dermott seemed amused. “How much do you know about crows, Lieutenant?”
Nardo squinted at the non sequitur.
“Crows are incredibly stupid,” said Dermott. “When you shoot one, another one comes. When you shoot that one, another comes, and then another, and another. You keep shooting them, and they keep coming.”
It was something Gurney had heard before-that crows would not let one of their own die alone. If a crow was dying, others would come and stand next to him, so he wouldn’t be alone. When he’d first heard that story, from his grandmother when he was ten or eleven years old, he had to leave the room because he knew he was going to cry. He went into the bathroom, and his heart ached.
“I saw a picture once of a crow shoot on a farm in Nebraska,” said Dermott with a mixture of amazement and contempt. “A farmer with a shotgun was standing next to a pile of dead crows that came up to his shoulder.” He paused, as if to allow Nardo time to appreciate the suicidal absurdity of crows and the relevance of their fate to the current situation.
Nardo shook his head. “You really think you can sit in here and shoot one cop after another as they come through the door without getting your head blown off? It’s not going to happen that way.”
“Of course it isn’t. Didn’t anyone ever tell you a literal mind is a small mind? I like the crow story, Lieutenant, but there are more efficient ways to exterminate vermin than shooting them one at a time. Gassing, for example. Gassing is very efficient, if you have the right sort of delivery system. Perhaps you’ve noticed that every room in this house is equipped with sprinklers. Every one except this one.” He paused again, his livelier eye sparkling with self-congratulation. “So if I shoot you and all the crows come flying in, I open two little valves on two little pipes, and twenty seconds later…” His smile became cherubic. “Do you have any idea what concentrated chlorine gas does to a human lung? And how rapidly it does it?”
Gurney watched Nardo struggling to assess this frighteningly contained man and his gassing threat. For an unnerving moment, he thought the cop’s pride and rage were about to propel him into a fatal leap forward, but instead Nardo took a few quiet breaths, which seemed to let some of the tension out of the spring, and spoke in a voice that sounded earnest and anxious.
“Chlorine compounds can be tricky. I worked with them in an antiterrorism unit. One guy accidentally produced some nitrogen trichloride as a by-product of another experiment. Didn’t even realize it. Blew his thumb off. Might not be as easy as you think to run your chemicals through a sprinkler system. I’m not sure you could do that.”
“Don’t waste your time trying to trick me, Lieutenant. You sound like you’re trying a technique from the police manual. What does it say-‘Express skepticism regarding the criminal’s plan, question his credibility, provoke him into providing additional details’? If you want to know more, there’s no need to trick me, just ask me. I have no secrets. What I do have, just so you know, are two fifty-gallon high-pressure tanks, filled with chlorine and ammonia, driven by an industrial compressor, linked directly to the main sprinkler pipe that feeds the system throughout the house. There are two valves concealed in this room that will join the combined one hundred gallons, releasing an enormous amount of gas in a highly concentrated form. As for the unlikely peripheral formation of nitrogen trichloride and the resultant explosion, I would regard that as a delightful plus, but I will be content with the simple asphyxiation of the Wycherly PD. It would be great fun to see you all blasted to pieces, but one must be content. The best must not be made the enemy of the good.”
“Mr. Dermott, what on earth is this all about?”
Dermott wrinkled his brow in a parody of someone who might be considering the question seriously.
“I received a note in the mail this morning. ‘Beware the snow, beware the sun, / the night, the day, nowhere to run.’” He quoted the words from Gurney’s poem with sarcastic histrionics, shooting him an inquisitive glance as he did so. “Empty threats, but I must thank whoever sent it. It reminded me how short life can be, that I should never put off till tomorrow what I can do today.”
“I don’t really get what you mean,” said Nardo, still in his earnest mode.
“Just do what I say, and you’ll end up understanding perfectly.”
“Fine, no problem. I just don’t want anyone to get hurt unnecessarily.”
“No, of course not.” The stretchy, wormlike smile came and went. “Nobody wants that. In fact, to avoid unnecessary hurt, I really do need you to lie down on the floor right now.”