Peter Pan Must Die (35 page)

He clicked on the drive icon, and a window opened immediately
with four video file icons—titled “CAM A (INT),” “CAM B (EAST),” “CAM C (WEST),” and “CAM D (SOUTH).”

Interesting. A four-camera array was an unusual level of video security for a small electronics store in a small city. Gurney figured the array was either an active display for the purpose of selling security cameras—like having a wall of televisions, all on—or, a possibility that had crossed his mind earlier, Hairy Harry and his girlfriend were in a riskier business than consumer electronics.

Since the south-facing camera would have been the one facing the Willow Rest cemetery, that was the file Gurney chose first. When he clicked on the icon, a video window appeared with controls for
PLAY, PAUSE, REVERSE
, and
CLOSE
, plus a sliding bar linked to the file time code, for getting to specific points in the video. He clicked on
PLAY
.

What he saw then was what he’d hoped for. It was almost too good to be true. Not only was the file resolution superb, but the camera that had produced the file evidently included the latest motion-tracking and zoom-to-action technology. And, of course, like most security cameras, it was motion-activated—recording video only when something was happening—and had a real-time indicator at the bottom of the frame.

The motion-activation feature meant that the nominal four-hour period of coverage would occupy far less recorded time in the file, since intervals of inactivity in the camera’s field of view would not be represented. So it was that the first hour of the period had produced less than ten minutes of digital footage—triggered mainly by hardy dog walkers and winter-suited joggers performing their morning rituals on a path that paralleled the low cemetery wall. The scene was brightened by pale winter sunlight and a light, patchy coating of snow.

It wasn’t until a little after nine that the camera responded to activity
inside
Willow Rest. A panel truck was moving slowly across the frame. It came to a stop in front of what Gurney recognized as the Spalter family plot (or, to use Paulette Purley’s term, “property”). Two men in bulky overalls emerged from the truck, opened its rear doors, and began unloading a number of dark, flat, rectangular objects. These were soon revealed to be folding chairs, which the men set up with evident care in two rows facing an elongated area of dark earth—the open grave intended for Mary Spalter. After making some adjustments in the position of the chairs, one of the men erected a portable podium
at the end of the grave, while the other retrieved a large broom from the truck and began sweeping some of the snow away from the grassy space between the chairs and the grave.

As this work was progressing, a small white car pulled into view and stopped behind the truck. Although he couldn’t be sure of the face, impossibly tiny in the video frame, Gurney had a feeling that the woman who got out of the car, bundled in a fur jacket and fur hat, gesturing as though she was giving instructions to the workmen, was Paulette Purley. After some more straightening of the chairs, the men got back in the truck and drove out of the frame.

The woman stood by herself, looking around the plot as if giving everything a final once-over, then got back in her car, drove it past the open grassy area, and parked next to some cold-withered rhododendrons. The video continued for another minute or so before stopping. It restarted at a point twenty-eight minutes later in real time—at 9:54 a.m.—with the arrival of a hearse and a number of other cars.

A man in a black overcoat came from the passenger side of the hearse, and the woman Gurney figured was Paulette Purley reemerged from her car. They met, shook hands, spoke briefly. The man walked back toward the hearse, gesturing as he went. Half a dozen dark-suited men got out of a limo, opened the rear door of the hearse, and slowly removed a casket, which they then carried with practiced smoothness to the open grave and placed on a supporting structure that held it at ground level.

At some signal Gurney did not detect, the mourners began coming out of the other cars parked in a row along the lane behind the hearse. Wrapped in winter coats and hats, they made their way to the two rows of chairs alongside the grave, gradually filling all but two of the sixteen seats. The two left vacant were those on either side of Mary Spalter’s triplet cousins.

The tallish man in the black overcoat, presumably the funeral director, moved to a position behind the seated mourners. The six pallbearers, having made some adjustments to the position of the casket, stood shoulder to shoulder beside him. Paulette Purley stood a few feet off to the side of the last pallbearer.

Gurney’s attention was fixed on the man in the end seat of the first row. The unsuspecting victim-to-be. The clock at the bottom of the
video window indicated that the time in Willow Rest was 10:19 a.m. Meaning that at that moment Carl Spalter had just one minute left. One more minute of life as he’d known it.

Gurney’s gaze went back and forth between Carl and the clock, feeling the erosion of time and life with a painful acuteness.

There was just half a minute left, before a .220 Swift bullet—the fastest, most accurate bullet in the world—would pierce the man’s left temple, fragment in his brain, and put an end to whatever future he might have imagined.

In his long NYPD career, Gurney had witnessed countless crimes on security videos—including muggings, beatings, burglaries, homicides—at gas stations, liquor stores, convenience stores, Laundromats, ATMs.

But this one was different.

The human context, with its complex and strained family relationships, was deeper. The emotional context was more vivid. The sedate physical appearance of the scene—the seated participants, the suggestion of a formal group portrait—bore no resemblance to the content of typical security camera footage. And Gurney knew more about the man about to be shot—in just a few more seconds—than he’d known up front about any other on-tape victim.

Then the moment came.

Gurney leaned in toward his computer screen, literally on the edge of his chair.

Carl Spalter rose and turned toward the podium that had been set up at the far end of the open grave. He took a step in that direction, passing in front of Alyssa. Then, just as he began to take another step, he lurched forward in a kind of stumbling collapse that carried him the length of the front row. He hit the ground face-first and lay motionless on the snow-whitened grass between his mother’s casket and his brother’s chair.

Jonah and Alyssa were the first on their feet, followed by two Elder Force ladies from the the second row. The pallbearers came around from behind the chairs. Paulette rushed toward Carl, dropped to her knees, and bent over him. After that it was difficult to sort out what was happening, as more people crowded around the fallen man.
During the ensuing minutes, at least three people appeared to have their phones out, making calls.

Gurney noted that Carl was hit, as the incident report indicated, at exactly 10:20. The first responder arrived at 10:28—a local uniform in a Long Falls police cruiser. Within the next couple of minutes, two more arrived, followed shortly by a trooper cruiser. At 10:42, an EMT unit arrived in a large ambulance. Parking directly in front of the main activity at the scene, blocking the security camera’s field of view, it rendered the remainder of the video useless to Gurney. Even the first unmarked car—presumably bringing Klemper—was obscured when it stopped on the far side of the ambulance.

After skimming through the rest of the video, sampling bits here and there and finding no important additional data, Gurney sat back in his desk chair to consider what he’d seen.

In addition to the unfortunate position of the ambulance, there was another problem with the material. Despite the high resolution of the camera, its formidable zoom lens, and its auto-framing capabilities, the sheer camera-to-subject distance resulted in a visual product with definite limitations. Although he’d understood what he saw happening, he knew that some of that understanding had been supplied by what he’d been told. He’d long ago accepted a major counterintuitive cognitive principle: We don’t think what we think because we see what we see. We see what we see because we think what we think. Preconceptions can easily override optical data—even make us see things that aren’t there.

What he wanted was stronger optical data—to make sure his preconceptions weren’t leading him in the wrong direction. Ideally, he’d submit the digital file to a sophisticated computer lab for maximum enhancement, but part of the price of retirement was lack of free access to that kind of resource. It occurred to him that Esti might have a back door into the NYSP lab that would enable her to get the job done without an ID or tracking number that could come back to bite her, but he wasn’t comfortable with nudging her into that position. At least, not until less risky options had been exhausted.

He picked up his phone and called Kyle—an avid storehouse of information on all things related to computers, the more complex the
better. He was invited to leave a message, and he did. “Hi, son. I have a digital technology problem. Official support channels aren’t available to deal with it. Here’s the thing. I have a hi-def video file that might be more revealing if we could apply a digital zoom effect without diluting its sharpness. That’s kind of a contradiction, but I think there’s enhancement software with certain algorithms that have a way of addressing that issue … so maybe you could point me in the right direction? Thanks, son. I’m sure whatever you can tell me will be a lot more than I already know.”

After ending the call, he decided to go back to the beginning of the video and view it again. But then he happened to notice the current time, displayed in the upper corner of his laptop screen. It was 5:48 p.m. Even if Madeleine had taken the longest of her usual trails through the woods—the one over the top of Carlson’s Ridge—she should have returned by now.

It was dinnertime, and she never … 
Oh, Christ! Of course!

He felt like an idiot. This was the day she was supposed to leave for her stay at the Winklers’. Too much was happening too damn fast. It was as though his brain couldn’t contain another speck of information, and every time something new got jammed in, it shoved something out the other side. It was kind of scary to think about. What else might he have forgotten?

That’s when he remembered that on his way in he’d seen her car parked by the house.

If she’s at the Winklers’, why the hell is her car still here?

Baffled, with a fast-growing feeling of unease, he called her cell number.

He was surprised a few seconds later to hear her phone ringing in the kitchen. Had she not gone to the Winklers’ after all? Was she somewhere around the house? He called out to her, but there was no answer. He went out from the den to the kitchen. Following the sound of the ring, he found her phone on the sideboard next to the stove. That was truly odd. As far as he knew, she never left the house without it. Perplexed, he gazed out the window, hoping that he might see her heading up through the pasture toward the house.

There was no sign or her. Just her car. Which meant she
had to
be
somewhere in the general vicinity—unless she’d gone somewhere with a friend who’d picked her up. Or unless, God forbid, she’d had an accident and was taken away in an ambulance.

He strained to recall anything she might have said that would …

Just then a breeze caught the asparagus ferns, stirring them briefly apart, and something bright flashed at the corner of his eye.

Something pink, he thought.

Then the ferns settled back together, and he wondered whether he’d seen anything at all.

Curiosity drove him outside to check.

As soon as he reached the far side of the asparagus bed his question was answered—with a larger one. Madeleine was sitting on the grass in one of her pink T-shirts. Next to her on the ground were a few pieces of bluestone placed over what appeared to be freshly loosened earth. On the far side of the stones, a shovel, recently used, lay on the grass. With her right hand, Madeleine was gently patting down the dark earth around the edges of the stones.

At first she said nothing.

“Maddie?”

She looked up at him with her mouth in a tight, sad little line.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Horace.”

“Horace?”

“One of those terrible creatures killed him.”

“Our rooster?”

She nodded.

“What sort of terrible creature?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I guess what Bruce said the other night when he was here. A weasel? A possum? I don’t know. He warned us. I should have listened.” She bit her lower lip.

“When did it happen?”

“This afternoon. When I got home, I let them out of the barn for some air. It was such a nice day. I had some cracked corn, which they love, so they followed me up to the house. They were right out here. Running around. Pecking in the grass. I went into the house for … something, I don’t even know what. I just …” She stopped for a
moment, shaking her head. “He was only four months old. He was just learning to crow. He looked so proud. Poor little Horace. Bruce warned us … he warned us … about what could happen.”

“You buried him?”

“Yes.” She reached over and smoothed the soil by the stones. “I couldn’t let his little body just lie there.” She sniffled, cleared her throat. “He was probably trying to protect the hens from the weasel. Don’t you think?”

Gurney had no idea what to think. “I guess so.”

After patting down the soil a few more times, she got up from the grass and they went into the house. The sun had already started to slide down behind the western ridge. The slope of the opposite hill was bathed in that ruddy-gold light that only ever lasted a minute or two.

It was a strange evening. After they had a brief, quiet dinner of leftovers, Madeleine settled into one of the armchairs by the big empty fireplace at the far end of the long room, abstractedly holding one of her perennial knitting projects in her lap.