Peter Pan Must Die (41 page)

He would sometimes think that the real explanation was nothing more complicated than the defense of his own peculiar comfort zone. That comfort zone did not include other people. That was the point his college girlfriend, Geraldine, had hammered home the day she left him so many years ago. When he viewed the issue in that light, he saw his apparent avoidance of his son as just one more symptom of his innate introversion. Not such a big deal. Case closed. But as soon as he would settle on this, a tiny doubt would begin to nibble at the edge of his certainty. Did simple introversion
fully
explain how little he saw of Kyle? And the nibble would grow into a gnawing question: Did the presence of
one
son inevitably remind him that he’d once had
two
sons and would still have two sons if only …

Kyle reappeared at the kitchen door. “You’re all set up. I left the screen open for you. It’s totally simple.”

“Oh. Great. Thank you.”

Kyle was watching him with a curious smile.

It reminded Gurney of a look he sometimes saw on Madeleine’s face. “What are you thinking?”

“About how you like to figure stuff out. How important it is to you. While that software was downloading, I was thinking … if Madeleine was a detective, she’d want to solve the puzzle so she could catch the bad guy. But I think you want to catch the bad guy so you can solve the puzzle.”

Gurney was pleased, not by his own position in the comparison—which didn’t strike him as especially laudable—but by Kyle’s perception in noting it. The young man had a good mind, a fact that meant a lot to Gurney. He felt a little surge of camaraderie. “You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking that you use the word ‘think’ almost as much as I do.”

As he was speaking, the house phone was ringing. He went into the den to answer it. As if summoned by Kyle’s reference to her, it was Madeleine.

“Good morning!” She sounded cheerful. “How are things going?”

“Fine. What are you up to?”

“Deirdre and Dennis and I just finished breakfast. Orange juice, blueberries, French toast, and … 
bacon
!” The final item was voiced with the faux guilt of having committed a faux sin. “We’ll be going out in a few minutes to check on all the animals and get them ready to transport to the fairgrounds. In fact, Dennis is out there by the little corral already, waving to us to come out.”

“Sounds like fun,” he replied in a not very fun-filled voice, marveling once again at her ability to find compartments of pure enjoyment within a larger landscape of serious problems.

“It
is
fun! How are our little hens this morning?”

“Fine, I assume. I was just about to go down to the barn.”

She paused, then in a more subdued tone stepped tentatively into the larger landscape, the one in which he was so deeply mired. “Any developments?”

“Well, Kyle showed up here at the house.”

“What? Why?”

“I asked him for some computer software advice, and he just decided to come up and do what needed to be done. Actually, it was very helpful.”

“Did you send him home?”

“I’m going to.”

She paused. “Please be careful.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“Okay. Well … Dennis is waving more urgently, so I better go. Love you!”

“Love you too.” He replaced the handset, then sat staring at the phone unseeingly, his mind drifting back to Panikos’s face on the video and the words “very fucking crazy.”

“Did I hear you say your video call was at eight?” Kyle’s voice from the den doorway pulled Gurney back to the moment. He glanced at the time in the corner of his computer screen—7:56 a.m.

“Thanks. Which reminds me—I wanted to ask you to stay out of the camera’s field of view during the call. Okay?”

“No problem. As a matter of fact, what I was thinking of doing, since you’ve got your other meeting here at nine, and it’s an ideal day for it … I thought I’d take a little ride on the bike up to Syracuse.”

“Syracuse?”
There was a time when the name of that gray snow-belt city meant little to Gurney, but now it had become a mental repository for all the terrible events of the recent Good Shepherd case.

Obviously, it had a more positive association for Kyle. “Yeah, I thought I’d take a ride up, as long as I was this far upstate, maybe have lunch with Kim.”

“Kim Corazon? You stayed in touch with her?”

“A little. By email mostly. She came down to the city once. I let her know last week that I planned to be up here with you for a few days, halfway to Syracuse, thought it might be a good time to get together with her.” He paused, eyeing his father warily. “You look kind of shocked.”

“ ‘Surprised’ would be the word. You never mentioned Kim after … after the case was wrapped up.”

“I figured you wouldn’t want to be reminded of that whole mess she dragged you into. Not that she meant to. But it ended up being pretty traumatic stuff.”

It was true that it wasn’t a case he enjoyed talking about. Or thinking about. Very few were. In fact, he rarely considered the past at all, unless it was a past case with loose ends that demanded resolution. But the Good Shepherd case wasn’t one of those. The Good Shepherd case was solved. The puzzle pieces, in the end, were all in place. It could be argued, however, that the price had been too high. And his own position in the final act of that drama had become one of Madeleine’s chief exhibits in her argument that he exposed himself too willingly to unreasonable levels of danger.

Kyle was watching him now with a worried look. “Does it bother you that I’m visiting her?”

In other circumstances, the honest answer would have been yes. He’d found Kim to be very ambitious, very emotional, very naive—a combination more troublesome than he would wish for in any girlfriend for his son. But in the current circumstances, Kyle’s plan struck him as a convenient coincidence—in the same category as Madeleine’s plan to help the Winklers.

“Actually,” said Gurney, “it seems like a pretty good idea at the moment—a bit safer, anyway.”

“Jeez, Dad, you really think something bad’s going to happen here?”

“I think the chance is very, very slight. But I wouldn’t want you to be exposed to it.”

“What about
you
?” It was Madeleine’s question, repeated in the same tone.

“It’s part of the job—part of what I signed on for when I agreed to help with the case.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No, son, there isn’t anything right now. But thank you.”

“Okay,” he said doubtfully. For a minute he looked lost, as if hoping for some other option, some other plan of action, to occur to him.

Gurney said nothing, just waited.

“Okay,” Kyle repeated. “Let me get some of my things and I’ll be on my way. When I get to Syracuse I’ll check in with you.” He retreated from the den with a worried frown.

A musical computer tone announced the start of Gurney’s eight a.m. video call.

A medium shot of a man sitting in a comfortable-looking armchair filled most of the laptop screen. Gurney recognized Jonah Spalter from his photograph on the Cyberspace Cathedral website. He was illuminated clearly, expertly, with no extraneous elements in the video framing to distract from the strong bone structure of his face. His expression was one of practiced calm seasoned with mild concern. He was gazing directly into the camera with the effect of gazing directly into Gurney’s eyes.

“Hello, David. I’m Jonah.” If his voice were a color, it would have been a pastel. “Is it all right if I call you David? Or would you prefer Detective Gurney?”

“David is fine. Thank you for getting in touch with me.”

There was a tiny nod, a tiny smile, the hint of a social worker’s concern in the eyes. “Your email had an urgent tone, along with some rather alarming phrases. How can I help you?”

“How much do you know about the effort to get your sister-in-law’s conviction overturned?”

“I know that the effort resulted in her lead attorney being killed, along with six of his neighbors.”

“Anything else?”

“I know that Mr. Bincher had made some serious allegations of police corruption. Your email to me also referred to corruption, as well as ‘family dynamics.’ That could mean just about anything. Perhaps you could explain it.”

“It’s an area that the official investigation is likely to pursue.”

“Official investigation?”

“Lex Bincher’s murder will force BCI to take a new look at your brother’s murder. Not only BCI, but probably the AG’s office as well, since the corruption charges in Kay’s appeal are aimed at BCI. At that point, we’ll be turning over the new evidence we’ve uncovered—evidence indicating that Kay was framed. So, whichever agencies are involved, they’ll be asking who, besides Kay, stood to benefit from Carl’s death.”

“Well,” said Jonah, with wide-eyed chagrin, “that would certainly include me.”

“Is it true that you and your brother didn’t get along?”

“Didn’t get along?” He laughed softly, ruefully. “That would be an understatement.” He closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head, as though overwhelmed by the thoughts this subject raised. When he spoke again his tone was sharper. “Do you know where I am right now?”

“I have no idea.”

“No one does. That’s the point.”

“What point?”

“Carl and I never did get along. When we were younger it didn’t matter that much. He had his friends and I had mine. We went our own ways. Then, as you may know—it’s no secret—our father yoked us together in the monstrosity known as Spalter Realty. That’s when ‘not getting along’ turned into something poisonous. When I was forced to work with Carl on a daily basis … I realized I was dealing with something more than a difficult brother. I was dealing with a
monster
.” Jonah paused, as if to give that term room to expand in Gurney’s imagination.

It sounded to Gurney like a speech Jonah might have delivered before—an oft-repeated explanation of a terrible relationship.

“I watched Carl evolve from a selfish, aggressive businessman into a complete sociopath. As his political ambition grew, on the outside he became more charming, more magnetic, more charismatic. On the inside, he was rotting away to nothing—a black hole of greed and ambition. In biblical terms, he was the ultimate ‘whitewashed sepulchre.’ He got in bed with like-minded people. Ruthless people. Major criminals. Mob figures like Donny Angel. Murderers. Carl wanted to pull enormous amounts of money out of Spalter Realty to
finance his megalomaniac schemes with those people, as well as his supremely hypocritical gubernatorial candidacy. He kept pressuring me to agree to unethical transactions that I wouldn’t—
couldn’t
—agree to. ‘Ethics,’ ‘morality,’ ‘legality’—none of those words meant anything to him. He began to frighten me. Actually, that’s not a strong enough word. The truth is, he
terrified
me. I came to believe there was nothing—
nothing
—he wouldn’t do to get what he wanted. Sometimes … the look in his eyes … it was positively satanic. As though all the evil in the world were concentrated in that gaze.”

“How did you deal with it?”

“Deal with it?” Again, the small smile and rueful laugh, followed by a lowered voice, almost confessional. “I ran away.”

“How?”

“I kept moving. Literally moving. One of the blessings of current technology is that you can do just about anything from anywhere. I bought a motor home, outfitted it with the appropriate communications equipment, and made it the rolling headquarters of the Cyberspace Cathedral. A process in which I have come to see the hand of Providence. Good can come out of evil, if good is our objective.”

“The good in this case being …?”

“Having no fixed geographical location, of being in a sense
nowhere
. My sole location has become the Internet, and the Internet is
everywhere
. Which has turned out to be the ideal ‘place’ for the Cathedral. The ubiquitous, worldwide Cyberspace Cathedral. Do you see what I mean, David? The need to get away from my brother and his deadly associates has been transformed into a gift. God does indeed work in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. This is a truth we encounter again and again. All that is required is an open mind and an open heart.” Jonah was looking increasingly radiant.

Gurney wondered if a delicate shift had been made in the lighting. He felt the urge to dull the glow. “Then you got a second gift, a large one, with Carl’s death.”

Jonah’s smile grew cooler. “That’s true. Once more, out of evil came good.”

“Apparently, quite a lot of good. I’ve heard that Spalter Realty’s assets are worth over fifty million dollars. Is that true?”

The man’s forehead frowned while his mouth continued to smile.
“In today’s market, it’s impossible to say.” He paused, shrugged. “But I suppose, give or take a significant amount, it’s as good as any other guess.”

“Is it true that before Carl’s death you couldn’t touch that money, but now it all goes to you?”

“Nominally to me, but ultimately to the Cathedral. I’m merely a conduit. The Cathedral is of supreme importance. It’s far more important than any individual. The work of the Cathedral is the only thing that matters. The
only
thing.”

Gurney wondered if he was hearing a not-so-subtle threat in this emphatic priority. Rather than take that issue head-on, however, he decided to change direction. “Were you surprised by Carl’s murder?”

That question triggered Jonah’s first noticeable hesitation. He steepled his fingers in front of his chest. “Yes and no.
Yes
, because one is always initially startled by that ultimate form of violence.
No
, because murder was not a surprising end to the kind of life Carl led. And I could easily imagine someone close to him being driven to that extreme.”

“Even someone like Kay?”

“Even someone like Kay.”

“Or someone like yourself?”

Jonah wrapped his answer in an earnest frown. “Or someone like myself.” Then he glanced, not quite surreptitiously, at his watch.