“And the answer is . . .?”
“Nothing. I wouldn’t do anything. I’d want to kill them, but I wouldn’t be able to.”
“Why not?”
Tears welled in Hammond’s extraordinary blue-green eyes. “I simply wouldn’t have the courage.”
A silence enveloped the table.
Hardwick nodded thoughtfully, as if the answer made sense to him, as if he now trusted Hammond a little more than he had before.
Gurney felt the same way. He felt that Hammond was probably innocent.
If he wasn’t innocent, he was just about the best liar on earth.
CHAPTER 46
Half an hour later, sitting in the Outback in front of the chalet with Madeleine and Hardwick, Gurney pointedly emphasized the need for objectivity.
Hardwick agreed. “I got the impression he was being straight with us. Your gut telling you anything different?”
“My gut is delivering pretty much the same message as yours,” said Gurney. “But my brain is telling me my gut shouldn’t be the final authority.”
Gurney reached into the glove box and took out the small cylindrical device that had arrived in the package on the balcony. He explained his near-certainty that it had been one of two pieces of electronic equipment installed over the bathroom in their suite. He concluded by asking Hardwick if he’d ever seen anything like it.
Hardwick switched on the dome light and studied the device. “Never. You send a photo of it to Wigg?”
“I did. But the thing is, she wants to see the object itself.”
Hardwick grimaced. “You suggesting I should hand-deliver it?”
“It’s just a quick run down to Albany.”
Hardwick put it in his jacket pocket. “Goddamn pain in the ass. You realize this contradicts your request that I hang close by?”
“Your not being here makes me nervous. But not knowing what that thing is makes me more nervous.”
“Better not turn out to be a fucking flashlight.”
“By the way, that pickup truck in back of the chalet is yours, right?”
“Actually belongs to Esti Moreno, love of my life.”
“She’s still living with you?”
“You doubt my ability to maintain a stable relationship?”
“Yes.”
“I gave her a list of all the key players we know of. She’s digging up whatever she can. In fact, she’s the one who dug up Steckle’s drug-dealing background. She lent me her truck. Hate to leave the GTO at home, but my favorite machine is shit in the snow. Forecast says a ton of that’s on the way. Which reminds me of Moe Blumberg.”
“Excuse me?”
“The timing. Shouldn’t we be worried that a man with a Brightwater background, who probably knows more than he’s telling us, just happens to be leaving the country?”
“I hadn’t thought to worry about that; but now that you mention it, I probably will.”
“And how about the dead kid’s mother? When you think about possible motives, wouldn’t she have the strongest one of all—to kill the fuckheads who killed her son?”
“From a pure motive point of view, I guess we can keep her in the picture. Problem is, she’d have a credible motive to kill the three who were at Brightwater. But why kill Ethan? And why now? Why not thirteen years ago?”
“That question would apply not just to Kimberly Fallon but to anyone who wanted to get even. The more I think about the old saying, ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold,’ the less credible it seems as a practical reason to put something off that long. Which makes the revenge motive pretty damn doubtful.”
“I don’t disagree, Jack. But if revenge has nothing to do with it, then what’s the Brightwater connection all about?”
“Fucked if I know. Too many questions in this case. And I’ll give you one more. How come Ethan’s dream description, which he wrote in the form of a letter, was never mailed?”
“Maybe he intended to deliver it personally to whoever asked him for it.”
“You mean, like to some therapist he was secretly seeing in Plattsburgh?”
“Or to Richard—a possibility we seem to be minimizing.”
“This conversation is nothing but question marks. If I’m going to get to Albany and back before everything is snowed in, I better leave. I’ll let the Hammonds know I’m going.”
“Stay in touch.”
Hardwick nodded, got out of the car, and headed into the chalet. Gurney pulled out onto the lake road.
WHEN THEY ARRIVED BACK AT THE LODGE, THE GRANDFATHER clock in the reception area was striking the final note of 10:00 AM. There was a deep stillness about the place, an empty feeling. They headed up the stairs. Madeleine’s arms were hugging her body tightly. “What are you going to do about the bathroom?”
“There’s not a lot to be done.”
“You said there was an opening by the light.”
“Just a narrow gap between the fixture medallion and the ceiling.”
“Can you close it up?”
It was the first thing he did after they went into the suite. All he had to do was nudge the medallion a quarter inch sideways, which he did with a few sharp taps with the handle of his toothbrush.
When he came out of the bathroom he found Madeleine at one of the windows, gazing out toward Devil’s Fang. The angle of the light against her cheek was making the tic more noticeable. She was still wearing her jacket and gloves.
“Could you do me a favor and type an email for me to my sister? I don’t want to take my gloves off. My fingers are aching with the cold as it is.”
“No problem. I’ll use my laptop. I hate using the screen keyboard on your tablet.”
When he was ready, she dictated the message while still facing the window.
It’s been a while since we’ve spoken. For that I apologize. This may seem a strange way to begin, after so long a silence, but I have a huge request. I need you to look back to the time when I was a teenager—when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. What do you remember about me in those years? What kind of person was I? Were you worried about me? What did I seem to want from you, from Mom and Dad, from my friends . . . from boys? Do you remember what made me angry? Or happy? Or sad? I need to know these things. Please think about them. Please tell me as much as you can. I need to know who I was back then.
She took a deep breath and let out a slow sigh. She wiped her face—seemed to be wiping away tears—with her still-gloved hands.
He felt helpless. After a few moments he asked, “Is there a particular way you want me to sign this for you?”
“No. Just save it, and I’ll take care of it before I send it. I had to get those questions written down while they were clear in my mind.” She finally turned away from the window. “I’m going to take a hot shower to get the chill out of my bones.”
She went into the bathroom, leaving the door open, and turned on the shower taps. She went to the corner of the room farthest from the tub and began taking off her clothes.
He saved the email to her sister and put his laptop to sleep.
He remembered that he’d gotten a call from Rebecca, the call he’d chosen not to take the previous evening in the middle of his conversation with Madeleine. He decided to listen to it now.
“David, when you asked me the other day if I knew anything about the term ‘trance-induced suicide,’ I said it sounded familiar. I just remembered why. And I looked it up in the New York Times online archive to refresh my memory. There was a report in the paper almost four years ago concerning one of those government leaker cases.
“A former CIA employee claimed that a secret directorate with the agency’s Field Operations Psychological Research and Support Unit was conducting unauthorized experiments in hypnotic mind control. No big surprise there. However, the purpose of the experiments was to see if an otherwise normal subject could be rendered suicidal. According to the leaker, whose name was Sylvan Marschalk, considerable resources were being applied to the project. I guess the notion of magically persuading people to kill themselves had a lot of appeal. It sounds ridiculous, but probably no more ridiculous than their plot to assassinate Castro with an exploding cigar. Apparently the project was taken seriously enough to generate its own clandestine budget and its own acronym—TIS, for trance-induced suicide.