Peter Pan Must Die (8 page)

Gurney thought about it. “Yeah. What the hell is the Cyberspace Cathedral?”

“Just another God-free religion. Type the words into a search engine, you’ll find out more than you ever wanted to know. Anything else?”

“Did Carl or Jonah have any kids?”

“Not Jonah. Too busy being spiritual. Carl has one daughter, from his first marriage. A demented slut.” Kay’s voice sounded as flatly factual as if she’d been describing the girl as “a college student.”

Gurney blinked at the disconnect. “You want to tell me more about that?”

She looked like she was about to, then shook her head. “Better that you look into it yourself. I’m not objective on that subject.”

After a few more questions and answers and after arranging a time for a follow-up phone call, Hardwick and Gurney stood to leave. Hardwick made a point of looking again at Kay’s bruised cheek. “You sure you’re all right? I know someone here. She could keep an eye on you, maybe separate you from the general population for a while.”

“I told you, I’ve got it covered.”

“Sure you’re not putting too many eggs in Crystal’s basket?”

“Crystal’s got a big, tough basket. And my nickname helps. Did I mention that? Here in the zoo it’s a term of great respect.”

“What nickname?”

She bared her teeth in a quick, chilly smile. “The Black Widow.”

Once they’d put the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility behind them and were heading for the Tappan Zee Bridge, Gurney brought up the subject that was eating at him. “I get the impression you know some significant things about this case that you haven’t told me.”

Hardwick gunned the engine and veered around a slow-moving minivan with an expression of disgust. “Obviously this asshole has no place to get to and doesn’t care when he arrives. Be nice to have a bulldozer, push him into a ditch.”

Gurney waited.

Hardwick eventually responded to his question. “You’ve got the outline, ace—key points, main actors. What more do you want?”

Gurney thought about this, thought about the tone. “You seem more like yourself than you did earlier this morning.”

“Fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“You figure it out. Remember I can still walk away from this, which I will do if I don’t get the feeling that I know everything you know about the Spalter murder case. I’m not playing front man just to get that woman to sign on with your lawyer. What did she say his name was?”

“Take it easy. No sweat. His name is Lex Bincher. You’ll meet him.”

“See, Jack, that’s the problem.”

“What problem?”

“You’re assuming things.”

“Assuming what things?”

“Assuming that I’m on board.”

Hardwick fixed a concentrated frown on the empty road ahead of them. The tic was back. “You’re not?”

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. The point is, I’ll let you know.”

“Right. Good.”

A silence fell between them that lasted until they were across the Hudson and speeding west on I-287. Gurney had spent the time reflecting on what it was that had him so upset, and had come to the conclusion that the problem wasn’t Hardwick. It was his own dishonesty.

In fact, he
was
on board. There were aspects of the case—beyond the appalling photograph of Carl Spalter—that had him intrigued. But he was pretending to be undecided. And the pretense had more to do with Madeleine than with Hardwick. He was pretending—and letting on to her—that this was a rational process he was conducting according to some objective criteria when, truth be told, it wasn’t anything like that. His involvement was no more a matter of rational choice than the idea that he might choose to be, or not to be, affected by gravity.

The truth was that a complex murder case attracted his attention and curiosity like nothing else on earth. He could make up reasons for it. He could say it was all about justice. About rectifying an imbalance in the scheme of things. About standing up for those who had been struck down. About a quest for truth.

But there were other times when he considered it nothing but high-stakes puzzle-solving, an obsessive-compulsive drive to fit all the loose pieces together. An intellectual game, a contest of mind and will. A playing field on which he could excel.

And then there was Madeleine’s dark suggestion: the possibility that he was somehow attracted by the terrible
risk
itself, that some self-hating part of his psyche kept drawing him blindly into the orbit of death.

His mind rejected that possibility even as his heart was chilled by it.

But ultimately he had no faith in anything he thought or said about the
why
of his profession. They were just ideas he had about it, labels he was sometimes comfortable with.

Did any of the labels capture the essence of the gravitational pull?

He couldn’t say.

The bottom line was this:

Rationalize and temporize as he might, he could no more walk away from a challenge like the Spalter case than an alcoholic could walk away from a martini after the first sip.

Suddenly exhausted, he closed his eyes.

When he finally opened them, he caught a glimpse of the Pepacton Reservoir dead ahead. Meaning they’d passed through Cat Hollow and were back in Delaware County, less than twenty minutes from Walnut Crossing. The water in the reservoir was depressingly low, the result of a dry summer, the kind of summer likely to produce a drab autumn.

His mind returned to the meeting at Bedford Hills.

He looked over at Hardwick, who appeared to be lost in his own unpleasant thoughts.

“So tell me, Jack, what do you know about Carl Spalter’s ‘demented slut’ daughter?”

“You obviously skimmed past that page in the trial transcript—where she testified to hearing Kay on the phone with someone the day before Carl got hit, saying that everything was arranged and that in twenty-four hours her problems would be over. The lovely young lady’s name is Alyssa. Think positive thoughts about her. Her demented sluttiness could be the key that springs our client.”

Hardwick was doing sixty-five on a winding stretch of road where the posted limit was forty-five. Gurney checked his seat belt. “You want to tell me why?”

“Alyssa is nineteen, movie-star gorgeous, and pure poison. I’ve been told she has the words ‘No Limits’ tattooed in a special place.” Hardwick’s expression exploded into a manic grin that faded as quickly as it appeared. “She’s also a heroin addict.”

“How does this help Kay?”

“Be patient. Seems Carl was very generous with little Alyssa. He spoiled her rotten, maybe worse than rotten—as long as he was alive. But his will was another matter. Maybe he had a moment of insight into what his junkie daughter could do with a few million bucks at her
disposal. So his will provided that everything would go to Kay. And he hadn’t changed the will at the time of the shooting—maybe because he hadn’t made up his mind about the divorce, or just hadn’t gotten around to it—a point the prosecutor kept highlighting as Kay’s main motive for the murder.”

Gurney nodded. “And after the shooting, he wasn’t capable of changing it.”

“Right. But there’s another side to that. Once Kay was convicted, it meant she couldn’t inherit a cent—because the law prevents a beneficiary from receiving the assets of a deceased person whose death the beneficiary has facilitated. The assets that would have gone to the guilty party are distributed instead to the next of kin—in this instance, Alyssa Spalter.”

“She got Carl’s money?”

“Not quite. These things move slowly at best, and the appeal will stop any actual distribution until there’s a final resolution.”

Gurney was starting to feel impatient. “So how is Miss ‘No Limits’ the key to the case?”

“She obviously had a powerful motive to see that Kay was found guilty. You might even say she also had a powerful motive for committing the murder herself, so long as Kay was blamed for it.”

“So what? The case file doesn’t mention any evidence that would connect her to the shooting. Did I miss something?”

“Not a thing.”

“So where are you going with this?”

Hardwick’s grin widened. Wherever he was going, he was obviously getting a kick out of the ride. Gurney glanced at the speedometer needle and saw that it was now hovering around seventy. They were heading downhill past the west end of the reservoir, approaching the tight curve at Barney’s Kayak Rentals. Gurney’s jaw tightened. Old muscle cars had plenty of horsepower, but the handling in fast turns could be unforgiving.

“Where am I going with this?” Hardwick’s eyes were gleaming with delight. “Well, let me ask you a question. Would you say there might be a slight conflict-of-interest issue … a slight due-process issue … a slight tainted-investigation issue … if a potential suspect in a murder case was fucking the chief investigating officer?”

“What—Klemper? And Alyssa Spalter?”

“Mick the Dick and the Demented Slut herself.”

“Jesus. You have proof of that?”

For a moment, the grin grew bigger and brighter than ever. “You know, Davey boy, I think that’s one of those little things you can help us with.”

Gurney said nothing. And he continued to say nothing for the next seventeen minutes, which is how long it took them to drive from the reservoir to Walnut Crossing, and then up the winding dirt and gravel road from the county route to his pond, pasture, and farmhouse.

Sitting next to the house in the roughly idling GTO, he knew he had to say something, and he wanted it to be unambiguous. “Jack, I have the feeling we’re on two different paths with this project of yours.”

Hardwick looked as if there were something sour in his mouth. “How so?”

“You keep pushing me toward the tainted-investigation issues, the due-process defects, et cetera.”

“That’s what appeals are all about.”

“I understand that. I’ll
get
there. But I can’t
start
there.”

“But if Mick Klemper—”

“I know, Jack, I know. If you can show that the CIO ignored an avenue of investigation because—”

“Because he was fucking a potential suspect, we could get the conviction reversed on that alone. Bingo! What’s wrong with that?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. My problem is how I’m supposed to get from here to there.”

“A smart first step would be to have a chat with the breathtaking Alyssa, get a sense of who we’re dealing with, the pressure points that could turn her our way, the angles that—”

“You see, that’s exactly what I mean by two different paths.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“For me, that chat could be a smart tenth or eleventh step, not a first step.”

“You’re making a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be.”

Gurney gazed out the car’s side window. Over the ridge beyond the pond, a hawk was slowly circling. “Apart from getting Kay Spalter to put her name on the dotted line, what am I supposed to be bringing to this party?”

“I told you already.”

“Tell me again.”

“You’re part of the strategy team. Part of the firepower. Part of the ultimate solution.”

“That so?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“If you want me to contribute, you need to let me do it my way.”

“What are you, Frank fucking Sinatra?”

“I can’t help you if you want me to put the tenth step ahead of the first.”

Hardwick uttered what sounded like a bad-tempered sigh of surrender. “Fine. What do you want to do?”

“I need to start at the beginning. In Long Falls. In the cemetery. In the building where the shooter stood. I need to be where it happened. I need to
see
it.”

“What the fuck? You want to reinvestigate the whole goddamn thing?”

“Doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

He was about to tell Hardwick that there was a bigger issue involved here than the pragmatic appeal goal. An issue of truth. Truth with a capital T. But the pretentious ring of that sentiment kept him from stating it. “I need to get grounded, literally.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Our focus is on Klemper’s fuck-ups, not the fucking graveyard.”

They went back and forth for another ten minutes.

In the end, Hardwick capitulated, shaking his head in exasperation. “Do whatever you want to do. Just don’t waste a shitload of time, okay?”

“I don’t plan to waste
any
time.”

“Whatever you say, Sherlock.”

Gurney got out of the car. The heavy door closed with a louder impact than he’d heard from a car door in decades.

Hardwick leaned over toward the open passenger-side window. “You’ll keep me informed, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Don’t spend too much time in that graveyard. That is one seriously peculiar place.”

“Meaning what?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” Scowling, Hardwick revved his obnoxiously loud engine, stirring it up from a bronchial rumble to a full roar. Then he eased out the clutch, turned the old red GTO around on the yellowing grass, and headed down the pasture trail.

Gurney looked up again at the hawk, gliding with elegant ease above the ridge. Then he went into the house, expecting to see Madeleine or to hear the sound of cello practice upstairs. He called her name. The interior of the house, however, communicated only that odd sense of emptiness it always seemed to have when she was out.

He thought about what day of the week it was—whether it was one of the three days she worked at the mental health clinic, but it wasn’t. He searched his memory for any trace of her mentioning one of her local board meetings, or yoga classes, or volunteer weeding sessions at the community garden, or shopping trips to Oneonta. But nothing came to mind.

He went back outside, looked up and down the gently sloping terrain on both sides of the house. Three deer stood watching him from the top of the high pasture. The hawk was still gliding, now in a wide circle, making only small adjustments in the angle of its outstretched wings.

He called out Madeleine’s name, this time loudly, and cupped his ears for a reply. There was none. But as he was listening, something caught his eye—below the low pasture, through the trees, a glimpse of fuchsia by the back corner of the little barn.