“It’s amazing how we can be so wrong about so many things.”
She smiled at him. “Can we walk over by the lake?”
“Sure.”
As they were crossing the road, a speck of color on the thin layer of packed snow the snow blower had left behind caught Gurney’s eye.
It was the color of blood.
A few feet farther on, there was a similar red speck.
They reached the far side of the road without his seeing any more.
Madeleine turned in the direction of the ridge road—the same way Fenton had gone. As she and Gurney ambled along, she took his arm. “Why did Landon have to kill Barlow Tarr?”
Gurney was thinking about those spots in the snow—almost certainly blood. It took a moment for her question to register.
“Maybe he was afraid Tarr knew something. Or maybe he just hated Tarr’s interference, hated that he had the temerity to remove those devices from the attic. I remember him complaining about Tarr’s fondness for chaos. That could have been motive enough for a control freak like Landon.”
“Why go to the trouble of putting his own coat and boots on the body?”
“Improvisation. Might have seemed like a useful idea at the time—create confusion, keep us off balance. I’m not sure he had time to think it through. Landon was under tremendous pressure at the end. His life, his career—everything was on the line. He did not work for a forgiving agency. He was trying to dodge the consequences of his own mistakes. I think he was making up his exit plan as he went along.”
“What an awful way to live.”
“Yes.”
As they walked on in silence, with no sight of Fenton on the road ahead, an unnerving thought occurred to Gurney—perhaps the result of his own mention of an exit plan—the thought that Fenton, in the light of his huge miscalculation, might be desperate enough to shoot himself.
He shared that fear with Madeleine.
She shook her head. “I doubt it. He strikes me as the kind of man who makes a lot of mistakes, creates trouble and pain in the lives of other people, but always finds a way to rationalize what he’s done and blame it on someone else. He’s not a nice man.”
Gurney couldn’t disagree with that.
“I’m starting to get cold,” she said. “Can we go back to the lodge?”
“Of course.”
“I’m looking forward to going home.”
He paused. “Do you feel that coming here has been of any help in dealing with the past?”
“I think so. I’m not hoping for a magic eraser anymore. And I seem to be able to think about Colin now without being chewed up by what happened. How about you?”
“Me?”
“Your murder case—how do you feel about the way it ended?”
He thought about the drops of blood in the snow and wondered if it had ended.
She looked at him curiously.
He was searching for a way to answer her question without frightening her all over again—when he was distracted by a vehicle coming down the ridge road.
It turned out to be Jack Hardwick in Esti Moreno’s pickup.
When he came abreast of them, he stopped and pointed backward with his thumb. “Saw Gilbert Asshole back there. Looked like he was pondering the prospect of a totally fucked-up career. You know what I say? I say fuck him.” He produced a glittering grin. “I made some calls. So did that trooper who came with Fenton. Cavalry’s on the way. Any sign of Norris?”
“Not at the moment,” said Gurney.
“Shoot the fucker on sight,” said Hardwick cheerily. “See you at the lodge.” He rolled up his window and proceeded the final hundred yards or so to the portico. He got out of the truck, lit a cigarette, and leaned against the rear fender.
When Gurney and Madeleine got to the area where he’d seen the red stains in the snow, he told her he wanted to take a quick look around before the police vehicles started rolling in, which was not entirely untrue. After giving him that appraising look of hers that said she knew he was leaving something out, she walked over and waited by the truck with Hardwick.
Gurney meanwhile laid out a mental grid, roughly forty feet by forty feet, surrounding the red spots. Then he paced slowly back and forth within the grid, moving gradually in the direction of the lake.
When he’d progressed almost to the road’s edge, he saw an exposed bit of something black and metallic embedded in the snow that had been packed down against the road surface by the weight of the snow blower. He scraped just enough of the snow aside with the tip of his boot to recognize the object. It was a compact suppressor, and it was attached to the barrel of a small-caliber pistol. He’d last seen that pistol in Landon’s hand.
His next realization brought him close to vomiting.
He recalled looking out the window that morning in the early dawn light . . . hearing the mammoth snow blower approaching . . . watching it rip effortlessly through the waist-high drifts that buried much of the road. He could picture the tower of pulverized ice and snow erupting from the spinning impeller blades, shooting up into the wind and swirling out over the lake.
Gritting his teeth now against the sickness rising in his throat, he forced himself to walk out on the frozen surface. At first he saw nothing but snow—snow gusting and eddying over the ice. He walked farther out, almost to the middle of the lake. Then he saw what he was looking for—what he’d hoped he wouldn’t see. There, in the blowing snow, was a tiny shred of fabric. And then another. As he walked on, he glimpsed a scrap of something that might be flesh. And farther on, a sliver of something that might be bone.
He turned back, moving with all the calmness he could muster, eventually joining Madeleine and Hardwick by the truck.
She regarded him questioningly at first, then with concern. “Should we go inside?”
He nodded.
As they were starting toward the lodge door, Hardwick looked down the road, cupping his hand to his ear. He began humming the theme from The Lone Ranger as a stream of police vehicles came into sight.
FOR A WHILE, GURNEY AND MADELEINE HAD THE HEARTH ROOM to themselves. He got a bottle of springwater from the cabinet under the guest bar and drank it down.
After a long silence Madeleine said, “Do you want to tell me about it?”
He stalled, giving his stomach more time to settle. And his mind to clear. He could think of no gentle way to say it. “I saw what’s left of Norris Landon.”
Her eyes widened in dawning horror.
“Apparently he didn’t get very far after I shot him. It looks like he collapsed on the road. And the snow covered him.”
“Covered him . . . and then this morning . . . Jack . . . Oh God.”
After all he’d seen in his homicide career, even after the horrors he’d seen just the night before, he was shocked by Landon’s fate—the grinding of his body into thousands of little fragments. Maybe there was a deep and bleak reminder in the man’s utter obliteration.
Dust to dust. With a vengeance.
A numb exhaustion began to overtake him.
Madeleine took his hand. “Come, sit on the couch.”
He allowed himself to be led to it. She sat next to him, holding his arm tightly against her.
He lost track of time.
After a while she said, “At least now it’s over.”
“Yes.”
“What will you tell them?”
“Only what I know for sure. That I shot Norris Landon and he disappeared in the dark corridor.” He paused. “The rest is up to them.”
He was thinking that winter had just begun.
The snow would fall, and keep falling.
The wind would blow down from Cemetery Ridge and Devil’s Fang.