“Hard to say, Jack.” He found himself articulating the man’s name with a peculiar emphasis, as though it were a quick left jab. “Right now I’m just curious about the video.”
“That so? Not bored to death yet by retirement? Not desperate to get back in the game? Not hot to help the hot lady?”
“Just like to see the video. You bring it?”
“The murder movie? You’ve never seen anything like it, Davey boy. High-def DVD taken at the crime scene with the crime in progress.”
Hardwick was standing in the middle of the big room that served as kitchen, dining room, and sitting room, with an old country stove at one end and a fieldstone fireplace forty feet away at the other end. His gaze covered it all in a few seconds. “Shit, it’s a fucking feature spread in
“The DVD player is in the den,” said Gurney, leading the way.
The video began arrestingly with an aerial shot of the countryside, the camera’s position slowly moving down at a steep angle until it was sweeping over green treetops, the bright green of springtime, following the course of a narrow road and a rushing stream-parallel ribbons of black asphalt and glittering water that linked a series of well- kept homes amid sprawling lawns and picturesque outbuildings.
An estate somewhat larger and grander than any of the others came into view, and the progress of the airborne camera slowed. When it reached a position directly above a vast emerald lawn with daffodil borders, its forward movement ceased entirely, and it descended smoothly to ground level.
“Jesus,” said Gurney. “They rented a helicopter to shoot their wedding video?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” rasped Hardwick. “Actually, the helicopter was just for the intro. From this point on, the video was recorded by four fixed cameras that were set up on the lawn in a way that covered the whole property. So there’s a complete sound-and-image file of everything that happened outdoors.”
The cream-colored stone house with its surrounding stone patios and free-form flower beds looked like a transplant from the Cotswolds-springtime in the bucolic English countryside.
“Where is this place?” asked Gurney as he and Hardwick settled down on the den couch in front of the DVD monitor.
Hardwick feigned surprise. “You don’t recognize the exclusive little hamlet of Tambury?”
“Why should I?”
“Tambury is a hotbed of important people, and you’re an important guy. Anyone who’s anybody knows somebody who lives in Tambury.”
“Guess I haven’t made the grade. You going to tell me where it is?”
“Hour northeast of here, halfway to Albany. I’ll give you directions.”
“I won’t be needing-” Gurney began, then stopped with a quizzical frown. “Wait a second. That wouldn’t by any chance be within Sheridan Kline’s-”
Hardwick cut him off. “Kline’s county? You bet it would. So you’ll have a chance to work with your old friends. The DA has a soft spot in his heart for you.”
“Jesus,” muttered Gurney.
“Man thinks you’re a fucking genius. Course, he did take the credit for your Mellery triumph, being the suck-ass politician he is, but deep down inside he knows he owes you.”
Gurney shook his head, looking back at the screen as he spoke. “Deep down inside Sheridan Kline there is nothing but a black hole.”
“Davey, Davey, Davey, you have such cruel opinions of God’s children.” Then, without waiting for a response, he turned to the screen and began narrating the video.
“Caterers,” he said as a team of spikily coiffed young men and women in black pants and crisp white tunics set up a serving bar and half a dozen hot tables.
“The host,” he said, pointing at the screen as a smiling man in a midnight blue suit with a red flower on the lapel emerged from an arched doorway in the back of the house and walked out onto the lawn. “Fiance, groom, husband, widower-all true on the same day, so call him whatever you want.”
“Scott Ashton?”
“The man himself.”
The man made his way purposefully along the edge of a flower bed toward the right side of the screen, but just before he disappeared, the angle of the scene switched, showing him walking toward what appeared to be a small guest cottage situated at the edge of the lawn where it abutted the woods, perhaps a hundred feet from the main house.
“How many cameras did you say this was shot with?” asked Gurney.
“Four on tripods-plus the one in the helicopter.”
“Who did the editing?”
“Video department at the bureau.”
Gurney watched Scott Ashton knocking on the cottage door-watched and heard, although the sound was not as sharp as the picture. The front of the door and Ashton’s back were about forty-five degrees to the camera. Ashton knocked again, calling out, “Hector.”
Gurney then heard what sounded to him like a Spanish-accented voice, too faint for the words to be recognizable. He glanced questioningly at Hardwick.
“We did an audio enhancement in the lab.
Ashton opened the door, went inside, closed it behind him.
Hardwick picked up the remote, pressed the “fast-forward” button, explaining, “He’s in there five or six minutes. Then he opens the door, and you can hear Ashton saying, ‘If you change your mind…’ Then he comes out, closes the door behind him, walks away.” Hardwick let go of the “fast-forward” button as Ashton was emerging from the cottage, looking less happy than when he went in.
“Is that the way they spoke to each other?” asked Gurney. “Ashton speaking English, Flores speaking Spanish?”
“I asked about that myself. Ashton told me it was a recent development, that up till a month or two earlier they’d both been speaking English. Said he believed it was a form of hostile regression, that going back to his native Spanish was Hector’s way of rejecting Ashton-by rejecting the language he’d taught him. Or some kind of psychobabble bullshit like that.”
On the screen, as Ashton was about to exit the frame, the view switched to another camera to reveal him walking toward a Greek-columned garden pavilion-the kind of miniature Parthenon-like structure popularized by Victorian landscape designers-where four tuxedoed men were arranging their music stands and folding chairs. Ashton spoke briefly with the tuxedoed men, but none of the voices were audible.
“String quartet instead of your basic DJ?” asked Gurney.
“This is Tambury-nothing basic about it.” Hardwick fast-forwarded through the rest of Ashton’s conversation with the musicians, through panning shots of the baronial grounds and main house, the catering staff arranging dinner plates and silverware on white linen tablecloths, a pair of willowy female bartenders setting up bottles and glasses, close-ups of red and white petunias cascading from carved stone urns.
“This was exactly four months ago?” asked Gurney.
Hardwick nodded. “Second Sunday in May. Perfect time for a wedding. Glories of spring, balmy breezes, nest- building time, doves cooing.”
The relentlessly sardonic tone was rubbing Gurney’s nerves raw.
When Hardwick stopped fast-forwarding and returned the DVD to “play” mode, the camera was focused on an elaborate ivied trellis that served as an entryway to the main expanse of the lawn. A loose line of wedding guests was strolling through it. There was music in the background, something cheerily baroque.
As each couple passed under the arched bower, Hardwick identified them, referring to a wrinkled list he’d pulled from his pants pocket. “Tambury chief of police Burt Luntz and his wife… President of Dartwell College and her husband… Ashton’s literary agent and her husband… President of the Tambury British Heritage Society and his wife… Congresswoman Liz Laughton and her husband… Philanthropist Angus Boyd and his young male whatever- he-is, calls him his ‘assistant’… Editor of the
Gurney interrupted. “Are they all like that?”
