Shut Your Eyes Tight

“By reducing the equation to its bare essentials.”

“Which are?”

“Suppose that Ashton did in fact kill Jillian.”

“And that Hector wasn’t involved?”

“Right,” said Gurney. “What would follow from that starting point?”

“That Ashton is a very good liar.”

“So maybe he’s been telling a lot of other lies, and we haven’t noticed.”

“Lies about Hector Flores?”

“Right,” said Gurney again, frowning thoughtfully. “About… Hector… Flores.”

“What is it?”

“Just… thinking.”

“What?”

“Is it… possible that…?”

“What is it?” asked Hardwick.

“Just a minute. I just want to…” Gurney’s voice trailed off into the electricity of his racing thoughts.

“What?”

“Just… reducing… the equation. Reducing it to the simplest… possible…”

“God, don’t keep stopping in the middle of sentences! Spit it out!”

Christ it couldn’t be that simple, could it?

But maybe it was! Maybe it was perfectly, ridiculously simple!

Why hadn’t he seen it sooner?

He laughed.

“For Godsake, Gurney…”

He hadn’t seen it sooner because he’d been searching for a missing piece. And he hadn’t been able to find it. Of course he hadn’t been able to find it. Because there was no missing piece. There never was a MISSING piece. There was an EXTRA piece. The piece that kept getting in the way of everything else. The piece that had been gettingin the way of the truth from the beginning. The piece that had been designed specifically to get in the way of the truth.

Hardwick was glaring at him in frustration.

Gurney turned toward him with a wild smile. “Do you know why no one could find Hector Flores after the murder?”

“Because he was dead?”

“I don’t think so. There are three possible explanations. One, he escaped from the area like everyone thought he did. Two, he’s dead, killed by the real murderer of Jillian Perry. Or three… he was never alive to begin with.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“It’s possible that Hector Flores never existed, that there never was any such person as Hector Flores, that Hector Flores was a myth created by Scott Ashton.”

“But all the stories…”

“They could all have come from Ashton himself.”

“What!?”

“Why not? Stories get started, they spread, take on a life of their own-a point you’ve made many times. Why couldn’t the stories all have had the same starting point?”

“But people saw Flores in Ashton’s car.”

“They saw a Mexican day laborer in a straw cowboy hat with sunglasses. The man they saw could have been anyone Ashton might have hired on that particular day.”

“But I don’t get how…”

“Don’t you see? Ashton could have created all the stories himself, all the rumors. Perfect food for gossip. The special new gardener. The wonderfully industrious Mexican. The man who learned everything amazingly quickly. The man of tremendous potential. The Cinderella man. The protege. The trusted personal assistant. The genius who began to develop little quirks. The man who stood naked on one foot in the garden pavilion. So many stories, so interesting, so colorful, so shocking, so delicious, so repeatable. The perfect food for gossip. God, don’t you see? He fed his neighbors an irresistible saga, and they ran with it, told it to one another, embellished it, told it to strangers. He created Hector Flores out of nothing and turned him into a legend, one chapter after another. A legend that Tambury couldn’t stop talking about. The man became bigger than life, realer than real.”

“What about the bullet in the teacup?”

“Easiest thing in the world. Ashton could have fired the bullet himself, hid the gun, reported it stolen. Perfectly believable that the crazy, ungrateful Mexican would have stolen the doctor’s expensive rifle.”

“Hold on a second. On that videotape, at the very beginning, before the reception starts, Ashton went to the cottage to talk to Flores. When he knocked on the door, the audio picked up a very low ‘Esta abierto.’ If there was no Hector Flores in there, who said that?”

“Obviously Ashton could have said it himself in a muffled voice. His back was to the camera.”

“But the girls Hector spoke to at Mapleshade…”

“The girls he supposedly spoke to are all conveniently dead or missing. So how do we know he ever spoke to anyone? There’s no one available who can actually say she saw him face-to-face. Isn’t that a pretty goddamn strange thing all by itself?”

They looked at each other, then at the computer screen, where Ashton could be seen speaking briefly to two of the girls, pointing instructively to various parts of the chapel area. He looked as relaxed and commanding as the winning general on the day the enemy surrendered.

Hardwick shook his head. “You really believe that Ashton came up with this incredibly elaborate scheme-that he invented this mythical person and managed to nurture the fiction for three years-just so he’d have someone to blame in case he decided someday to get married and murder his wife? Doesn’t that sound a little ridiculous?”

“Put that way, it sounds totally ridiculous. But suppose he had another reason for inventing Hector?”

“What reason?”

“I don’t know. A bigger reason. A more practical reason.”

“Seems awfully shaky. And what about the Skard business? Wasn’t that all based on the theory that one of the Skard brothers, probably Leonardo, was masquerading as Hector and talking unrepentant Mapleshade girls into leaving home for money and thrills after graduation? If there was no Hector, what happens to that whole sex- slavery scenario?”

“I don’t know.” It was a crucial question, thought Gurney. What sense did any of their theories make if they depended on the idea that Leonardo Skard was operating in the guise of Hector Flores-if no one called Hector Flores had ever existed?

Chapter 77

The final episode

“By the way,” said Gurney, “you happen to have your weapon on you?”

“Always,” said Hardwick. “My ankle would feel naked without its little holster. In my humble opinion, bullets sometimes rank right up there with brains as problem solvers. Why do you ask? You intend to make a dramatic move?”

“No dramatic move just yet. We need to be a lot surer about what’s going on.”

“You sounded damn sure of yourself a minute ago.”

Gurney made a face. “All I’m sure of is that my version of the Perry murder is possible. Or that it’s not impossible. Scott Ashton could have killed Jillian Perry. Could have. But it needs more digging, more facts. Right now there’s