Just before they entered the suite, he asked her to use the tablet to find an energetic musical selection on YouTube, explaining that he owed Hardwick a callback to finish their interrupted conversation, and he wanted some audio camouflage that would enable him to speak freely.
She chose an atonal piano concerto whose agitato movement could have drowned out a gunfight. Gurney settled down on the couch, switched on the table lamp to brighten the gray light coming in from the windows, and made the call.
Hardwick picked up on the first ring.
“Hey, Jack, how are the roads?”
“Like greased pig shit. Didn’t you say you were going to get back to me in a few minutes? You must have some fucking odd concept of the word ‘few.’”
Gurney ignored the ritual abuse. “The last thing we were talking about was the odd circumstance of all those bad guys biting the dust while their intended victim remained alive and well. You have any ideas about that?”
“I do. It kinda falls into the counterintuitive box, but it makes sense.”
“Okay. So what is it?”
“I’m thinking Jane Hammond may have whacked all four vics. Or at least three of them.”
Gurney waited.
“You still there?”
“I’m waiting for the part that makes sense.”
“Let’s say there was a conspiracy to concoct a creepy-dirty case against Richard—for the purpose of blackmailing him. And suppose Jane found out about it. Or maybe the blackmailers got in touch with her directly. Told her about a big malpractice suit they were planning. Hinted that a generous out-of-court settlement could be in everyone’s best interest.”
“And then what?”
“And then sweet little Jane went into protective Grizzly Bear mode and decided the only good blackmailers were dead blackmailers. And no crime, no matter how bloody, would really be a crime if it involved saving her precious brother from evil predators.”
“You really see Jane doing those murders?”
“Grizzly Bear knows no limits.”
Gurney tried to work his way through the scenario. “Theoretically, I get the possible motive. But I’m tripping over issues of means and opportunity. Are you saying that she thought Ethan was part of the conspiracy and killed him, too?”
“I can’t say that yet. Ethan’s role is still a mystery.”
“Why set up the murders to look like the dreams they’d been claiming to have? If she was trying to protect Richard, why do it in a way that would pull him further into it?”
“Maybe she was just trying to create credible suicide scenes. Maybe she was thinking, as long as these guys were dreaming about daggers, it would make sense to have it look like they cut their wrists with daggers?”
“Are you hearing yourself, Jack? Can you really picture Jane Hammond running around the country—New Jersey, Long Island, Florida—drugging these guys and slicing up their wrists? And if she did all that, why would she be so eager to have you and me rooting around, trying to figure it all out?”
“That last question’s easy. She wouldn’t have anticipated the way the official investigation would go. Who the fuck would expect a BCI investigator to become obsessed with some exotic trance-induced suicide scenario? So when Fenton turned everything against Richard with that cockamamie concept, what the hell was she going to do? I think she brought us in to dig him out of the hole she put him in. She accepted the risk that she might end up paying the price. It would be better than seeing her brother prosecuted for what she did. That would completely blow her circuits.”
“You’re making an enthusiastic case, Jack, but—” He was stopped in mid-sentence by the sound, barely audible behind the music, of the shower being turned on.
Again? Jesus! First, an endless succession of baths. Now, showers.
“You there, ace?”
“What? Sure. Just thinking. Going over what you were saying.”
“I know it’s not all nailed down. Bits and pieces are still bouncing around. The idea just came to me twenty minutes ago. It needs more thought. But my point is, Janie the cuddly caretaker should not be getting a free pass. Just because she talks like a social worker doesn’t mean she couldn’t slice a few wrists, given the right circumstances.”
Gurney had other problems with the Jane-as-killer hypothesis, but he left them unstated. While he had Hardwick on the phone, he wanted to move on to aspects of the case he deemed more promising. But before he had a chance to, the man hit him with an unnervingly timely question:
“How come your wife’s so freaked out by all this?”
Gurney wasn’t sure how much he should reveal to Hardwick. Or if he wanted to reveal anything at all.
“You think she looks troubled?”
“Looks, sounds, acts. It just seems odd—for a homicide guy’s wife who’s been through this kind of shit before. So I’m wondering what the deer-in-the-headlights look is all about.”
Gurney paused. He hated thinking about it. He looked around the room—maybe for a way out, maybe for an inspiration. He ended up staring at the portrait of Harding. A man who never wanted to deal with anything.
He sighed. “Long story.”
Hardwick belched. “Everything’s a long story. But every story has a short version, right?”
“Problem is, it’s not my story to tell.”
“So you’re telling me she’s not only fucked up, she’s fucked up with a secret?”
“Something like that.” He looked over his shoulder through the open bathroom door and saw that Madeleine was still in the shower.
“This secret of hers affecting what we’re trying to do here?”
Gurney hesitated, then decided to reveal what he could without getting too explicit. “She used to spend her Christmas vacations with relatives here in the Adirondacks. Something bad happened the last year she was here. She’s dealing with difficult memories.”
“Maybe you should take her home?”
“She wants to get some kind of closure here. And she wants us to ‘save’ Hammond.”
“Why?”
“I think to make up for someone in her life a long time ago who wasn’t saved.”
“That sounds fucked up.”
Gurney hesitated. “She’s seeing things.”
“What kind of things?”
“A dead body. Or maybe a ghost. She’s not sure.”
“Where did she see it?”
“In the bathtub.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Any particular dead body?”
“Someone from her past. Her Adirondack past.”
“Someone connected with the bad thing that happened?”
“Yes.”
“And she thinks saving Hammond now will make up for what happened then?”
“I think so.”
“Shit. That doesn’t sound like the Madeleine I know.”
“No. It’s not like her at all. She’s in the grip of . . . I don’t know what.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to figure out what’s going on. Expose the truth. Get her the hell out of here.”
He glanced over into the bathroom, saw her still standing in the shower behind the steamy glass door. He told himself this was a good thing. The primal, curative power of warm water.
“So,” said Hardwick in an abrupt change of tone, “apart from my delivering the little black tube thing to Wigg, you have a next step in mind?”